20VC: Mercor CPO on Revenue Concentration from Frontier Labs | Why Large Enterprise is Scared to Partner with Frontier Labs | Why Small Specialised Models is the Future with Osvald Nitski

**Osvald Nitski** (0:00)
We can't spend money fast enough to service all of the demand that we have. We end every week with so much more money in the bank. I don't think there's an ROI problem right now. Even Figma is, we're moving away from it in favor of cloud design more and more. Get a real internship as soon as possible because whatever you learn in school is probably gonna be outdated quickly.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:21)
This is 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings, and today we have Osvald Nitski, CPO at Mercor, in the hot seat. Today, it's a really open conversation in a way that I don't think has been had with someone from Mercor before about, what happens if Frontier Models actually do what the data providers are gonna do? How does synthetic data cannibalize their business? Does open source help or hurt data providers because their biggest customer, oh yeah, it's the closed Frontier Models. This and so much more in our conversation with Osvald today. But before we dive in to the show today, most companies have tried AI, most aren't seeing results. Not because AI doesn't work, it's because AI hasn't reached the workflows yet. That's the gap Asana is built to close. Asana is the operating system for human agent teams, your easy button for AI productivity across every team. Ready to go AI teammates, pre-built for marketing, ops and IT, no prompt engineering, no setup, they show up where the work is happening already on-boarded in your workflows ready to deliver. With Asana, your whole company can work on the same plan towards the same goal, whether you're a team of 10 or a team of 10,000. Asana, where humans and agents workflow together. Try it at asana.com, that's asana.com. While Asana keeps the work moving, zero hash helps move money on chain. Every great software company eventually runs into money. Uber had to move it. Shopify had to hold it. Airbnb had to settle it. Money movement stopped being a fintech problem. It became a software problem. And increasingly, god, it's an AI problem too. Zero hash is the infrastructure that makes global, instant money movement seamless. One API integration for stable coins, digital assets and modern payment rails, so builders can stay builders. Zero hash powers some of the world's largest enterprises and financial institutions, including Kalshi, Stripe, Morgan Stanley, Gusto and Interactive Brokers. If you're thinking about stable coins, digital assets and the future of money, it's time to talk to the team at Zero Hash. Visit zerohash.com/20vc to learn more. While Zero Hash powers on-chain payments, Framer powers your website. When a new landing page turns into a pile of tickets and handoffs, Framer helps your team move faster. Here's what I love. Framer is the pro-AI website builder for creators, teams and businesses that care enough to get every detail right. The agents close the gap between AI-generated ideas and production-ready website work because it all happens where the site actually lives. It lands on the canvas, stays editable and can be published when the team is ready. So you can build custom code components, create and manage CMS content, optimize SEO settings and ship everything all in one place. The agents bring speed and scale, you bring taste, judgment and control. It's an enterprise-level solution too. Premium hosting, enterprise-grade security, 99.99% uptime SLAs, which is why the world's leading brands, like Perplexity and Miro, build in Framer. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started by building for free today at framer.com/20vc for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/20vc for 30% off.
framer.com/20vcrules and restrictions may apply. You have now arrived at your destination. Osvald, it is so good to have you on the show, dude. I've heard so many good things from Brandon. So thank you so much for making this happen, man.

**Osvald Nitski** (4:01)
Thanks for having me. Super excited.

**Harry Stebbings** (4:03)
I am seeing open, open, open. Everyone claiming that we will see the mass migration from Frontier closed to open. Kimi very recently came out with their new model.
And I literally didn't, I didn't really know. Does open cannibalize Mercor's core business?

**Osvald Nitski** (4:20)
I wouldn't say that open source model improvements cannibalize our core business because data is most valuable on the frontier of model performance. So each of our customers has their own unique goals and is purchasing e-val and training data sets to fill gaps in current model capabilities. Open models just raise the floor of what people are interested in.
As long as customers still have new capabilities that they want to get better at, our business still continues to grow. Open source models just mean that nobody is buying anything that can be K3, can already do.