Open Source AI
Open models, open weights, and the ecosystem around them.
Open source AI covers models, weights, and tooling released for anyone to run, inspect, and build on — from open-weight model families to the developer ecosystems and enterprise tradeoffs that come with not depending on a single closed provider.
A downloadable set of weights and an open source AI system are not interchangeable labels. The Open Source Initiative's definition requires freedoms to use, study, modify and share, together with training-data information, code and parameters in the preferred form for modification (OSI, Open Source AI Definition 1.0). When assessing a model for a product, inspect its actual license and available artifacts rather than relying on the word open.
Angie Jones in episode 48 describes Block's open source Goose client and its use of MCP. Fergal Reid in episode 49 discusses Intercom's move to an adapted open model for a specific product workload. Open source vs proprietary LLMs compares the deployment choices, while can an open model cut your AI costs? follows the Intercom case. Open weights defines the narrower release category.
20 episodes
- AI Codes: Product Engineers Decide What to Build | Laurie Voss, Arize
- Thomson 1: The New $40M Legal AI Model | Thomson Reuters Joel Hron
- Time to Exploit is Negative: AI Broke the Patch Cycle | Dan Lorenc, Chainguard
- Parenting Your AI Agents for Best Results | Cisco's Jeetu Patel
- Most of the Web Will Never Get APIs for AI Agents | Dhruv Batra, Yutori
- The AI Framework Era Is Over: Why Context Is the Moat | Jerry Liu of LlamaIndex
- How Superhuman Built AI Into a 100ms Product | Loïc Houssier
- 250,000 Lines of Code/Week: Inside an AMD VP's Agent-First Workflow | Anush Elangovan
- Agent Memory: The Last Battleground in the AI Stack | Richmond Alake, Oracle
- Context Poisoning is Killing Your AI Agents: How to Stop it | Michel Tricot, Airbyte
- How Intercom Cut $250K/Month by Ditching GPT for Open Models | Fergal Reid
- How Block Deployed AI Agents to 12,000 Employees in 8 Weeks w/ MCP | Angie Jones
- Gemini 3 & Robot Dogs: Inside Google DeepMind's AI Experiments | Paige Bailey
- Architecting AI Agents: The Shift from Models to Systems | Aishwarya Srinivasan
- Architecting Reliable Agentic AI | Cisco’s Giovanna Carofiglio on the AGNTCY Collective
- How DeepSeek Changed the AI Race Overnight
- AI, Open Source & Developer Safety | Block’s Rizel Scarlett
- The Enterprise AI Deployment Playbook | ServiceTitan, Indeed & Twilio
- GenAI Predictions for 2025 | Databricks & Cohere
- The State of AI: Open-Source Models & Enterprise Trust | May Habib
Explainers on this topic
- Open-Weight vs. Open-Source AI Models
- When an Open Model Beats a Frontier API on Cost
- The Switching Cost in AI Hardware Is Software
- Open vs. Proprietary AI Models: When to Use Which
Terms on this topic
- AI Supply Chain
- Closed Source
- Hugging Face
- Model Card
- Open Source
- Open Weights
- Open-Source Model
- PyTorch
- Small Language Model
Essays on this topic
- Inverting the Innovator's Dilemma with Open Source AI Agents
- How Intercom Cut $250K/Month by Ditching GPT for Qwen
Guests on this topic
Laurie VossJoel HronDan LorencJeetu PatelDhruv BatraJerry LiuLoïc HoussierAnush ElangovanRichmond AlakeMichel TricotFergal ReidAngie JonesPaige BaileyAishwarya SrinivasanGiovanna CarofiglioAtindriyo SanyalRizel ScarlettMehmet Murat EzbiderliVinnie GiarrussoGrant LedfordSara HookerCraig WileyVikram ChatterjiMay Habib