Open-Source Code and Nuclear Energy Are the Building Blocks of AI

Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, bringing you stories of capitalism about things you need to know, but even more things you need to think about. I’m David Westin, and this week we talked to AMD CEO Lisa Su, who told us why open source for AI is so important, and GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik, who laid out his plans for getting the nuclear energy we need for AI. If you’re not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter.

The race is on to “win” in generative AI. But it turns out that how fast competitors can move may depend in part on whether they’re willing to share.

Companies like Google have so far chosen to keep their code to themselves, and even the “open source” champion, Meta, is reportedly making the next version of its AI model proprietary. Still, China’s DeepSeek is open source.