Not all AI models are created equal and choosing the wrong one can be costly. Dell’s Global CTO & Chief AI Officer John Roese breaks down the four major model types (frontier, open, open weight and sovereign) and walks through the five dimensions every technology leader needs to evaluate before selecting a model for their use case.
Chapters:
00:00 — Why the model ecosystem is expanding fast — and why it matters to you
00:50 — Frontier models: when to use the most capable (and expensive) tools in the world
01:34 — Open models: the workhorse of stable workloads
02:33 — Closed weight vs. open weight: what you can control, and what you can’t
03:20 — When a model becomes a "pet": the real cost of fine-tuning
04:06 — Sovereign models: why geopolitics is now a model selection criterion
04:53 — How to choose a model: start with the problem, not the technology
05:29 — The five dimensions every technology leader must evaluate
07:22 — The hidden risk of long-running agents
08:21 — Dell’s deployment philosophy: why on-premises still wins in many scenarios
