The Hidden Risk in Your AI Rollout: Not All Models Are Safe for Business

If you’re a CEO thinking about where to bring AI into your business — sales, operations, R&D, or customer service — here’s the part you can’t afford to overlook: not all AI models are created equal when it comes to security and business compliance.

Most of the buzz is about how smart these models are. But as a leader, your first questions should be:

Can I trust this model with sensitive customer or IP data?
Does it meet the same security and compliance standards as the rest of my tech stack?
Has my team chosen the right model — and deployed it in the right way?

In this article I consider the top 10 most powerful AI models based on live battle testing at LMSYS Arena — and I’m giving you the bottom line: Which models are ready for enterprise use — and which ones aren’t.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Severin Sorensen and has been approved for placement on Arete Coach. Scroll to continue reading or click here to read the original article.

The 10 Best AI Models — And Whether They’re Safe for Business

What This Means for You as a CEO

If you’re in a regulated industry or handle sensitive customer data, your AI should live inside an enterprise-ready environment.

Green Light: GPT-4 (via Azure OpenAI, OpenAI Enterprise, or ChatGPT Teams), Gemini 2.5 (via Google Cloud Vertex AI), and Claude Sonnet (via Palantir, for mission-critical security needs).
- These enterprise-grade offerings — including ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Teams, and the Gemini business suite — come with built-in security protections like data isolation, no data retention, encryption at rest and in transit, and compliance with standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR.
Caution: Open-source models like DeepSeek.
- Useful for internal innovation, but only if your tech team is set up for secure, containerized deployment.
Not Yet: Models like Grok, designed for consumer use or embedded in social platforms.
- Impressive? Yes. Business-ready? No.

Need Military-Grade AI Security? Look to Palantir

Some of the most secure AI deployments don’t even appear on public leaderboards. That’s because firms like Palantir don’t build their own LLMs—they embed best-in-class models like Claude Sonnet 3.7 or GPT-4 inside zero-trust, air-gapped environments.

Palantir is trusted by:

National defense agencies
Global intelligence communities
Fortune 100s with high-risk environments

If compartmentalization, audit trails, and data sovereignty are critical to your business, this is your gold standard. Palantir's implementation of Claude Sonnet may be the most secure LLM deployment in existence today.

CEO Action Checklist

If you’re greenlighting AI initiatives this quarter, ask your team:

Which model are we using — and where is it hosted?
Does it meet our internal standards for encryption, access control, and auditability?
Are we covered on GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001?
Is our AI deployment aligned with our broader risk management framework?

And if the answer is “we’re not sure,” then it’s time to loop in your CTO, CISO, or network admin—before that next big AI rollout goes live.

Final Word

AI is the most powerful productivity tool of our time. But if you’re the CEO, your job isn’t to get distracted by the buzz — it’s to ask the hard questions that protect your people, your customers, and your company’s reputation.

Lead with clarity. Deploy with security. And scale with confidence.