Open-weight models are giving enterprises more choice in how they put proprietary data to work. Turning that flexibility into useful applications requires models and enterprise data systems to work together.

Cloudera Inc.’s partnership with Mistral AI SAS brings those pieces together. The collaboration pairs Cloudera’s enterprise data foundation with Mistral’s customizable models, according to Marjorie Janiewicz (pictured, right), chief revenue officer of Mistral AI.

“Companies need to be able to control where those models get deployed,” she said. “They need to own those models so that the day somebody decides to unplug them, they have business continuity. So open weights from an approach perspective is very important.”

Janiewicz and Abhas Ricky (left), chief business officer and general manager of Applied AI at Cloudera Inc., spoke with co-hosts Rebecca Knight and Paul Gillin at EVOLVE26, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed model deployments, enterprise data and secure deployment. (* Disclosure below.)

Open-weight models meet enterprise context

The model portfolio includes Mistral Large 4, with joint engineering teams helping customers choose models and infrastructure for specific use cases. For enterprises, using models trained on public sources through an application programming interface is only a starting point, according to Ricky.

“You want to be able to ground that with your domain-specific context, with your domain-specific information,” he said. “Oftentimes, that’s actually sitting in closed firewall environments, and that context is critical for high-fidelity outputs whether using a model or an agentic solution.”

Demand spans financial services, public sector and manufacturing as organizations explore open-weight models. Customizing those models with proprietary information can help businesses develop new solutions from their existing intellectual property, according to Janiewicz.

“When you touch the heart of those businesses, think [know your customer processes] in financial services, as an example, or crash testing in automotive,” she said. “You are at the heart of the business. You need a solution that’s safe [and] secure, and you need to be independent in your ability to construct those systems.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of EVOLVE26:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for EVOLVE26. Neither Cloudera, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE