First: the model companies are essential
The companies building AI models are doing remarkable work. Their models are already useful to almost every kind of business, and they will become more so. Nothing in this article says do not use them. We use them every day, and we expect every business to.
The question is not whether to use them. It is where your business's operations should live while you do.
A factory is your business, written down
In the age of factories, a business writes down how it works well enough for AI agents to carry it out: what comes in, who decides, what is done, what the rules are, what has been learned. A fully realised factory is not a tool your business uses. It is a copy of how your business runs.
That is new. Software you rent has always held your data, and that matters. A factory holds something more: your method. If a competitor, or a potential competitor, could reach a fully realised factory, they could copy your operations completely. You would have no moat. That is why a factory is different from other software, and why we think it needs a different answer.
Use them; do not build on them
The easy path today is to build your operations inside a platform run by the company that sells you the model. It is simple, and it works. It also puts your written-down business inside walls someone else sets, on terms someone else can change.
We believe a business should build its factory on hardware it owns or controls, and plug the model companies in as service providers: send each model only what a task needs, and keep the factory, its records and its knowledge at home. Used that way, the models are as powerful as ever, and replaceable. If prices, terms or quality change, you switch the provider, not your business. We call that option source: the software need not be open source, but your choices should stay open.
Questions an owner should ask
Before building your operations on any platform, ours included, ask:
- Who can read my factory?
- Can my usage improve a model that is sold to my competitors?
- What recourse do I have if my work is used in a way I did not agree to?
- Could I leave tomorrow, with everything?
The answers differ by company and by plan, and they change. Read the terms, and ask someone qualified to read them with you. If any answer is unclear, treat it as a risk to your moat.
Not a for-profit third party, either
The same reasoning applies beyond the model companies. A business owns its factories and need not depend on a for-profit to hold them. The Foundation runs none.
In Andrew's own account, this is why Infinity OS was set up with a non-profit at its centre. StarMynd, his company, helps businesses build their own factories; in his words, it is there to help, not to store them. Where the Foundation helps define a standard or publish factories, the aim is that a business can run its factory itself.
Our open factories, when they exist, will be blueprints: something to get started from. Each business owns its own factory, the one that runs its business.
Leaving is a promise
Ownership means you can leave. In the standard we are helping to define, a business can export its data, its skills and its approved knowledge in the standard format, uninstall, and switch provider at any time. That is a commitment of the design. Infinity OS is being built and not yet released, so we do not claim it works today.
This article names no company or product on purpose. It describes risks for an owner to weigh, not claims about any company's conduct.