Big AI Got Caught Off Guard by Open Source

For a while, the narrative was pretty straightforward: the real breakthroughs in AI would come from the big players—OpenAI, Google, Meta and let's not forget when we all thought Apple had something up it's sleeve that it ultimately didn't. They had the resources, the talent, and all the data they could possibly want. They were in control, setting the pace, owning the spotlight. But then something happened they didn’t quite see coming: open source caught up—fast.

In just the last year, models like Mistral, LLaMA, DeepSeek and Mixtral have taken massive leaps forward. They’re compact, powerful, and now run comfortably on a consumer-grade GPU. Meanwhile, tools like LM Studio, Ollama, and GGUF quantization have made deploying and playing with these models laughably easy. The open source community is moving with a kind of speed and creativity that the big corporations just can’t keep up with.

You can feel the shift. Not long ago, every big AI model came wrapped in a glossy demo and locked behind a paid API or service. Now? Some of the best-performing models are being downloaded, tweaked, and fine-tuned by developers in home offices and living rooms.

I still use ChatGPT—it’s a great tool. No complaints there. But I’ve also got Ollama and Open WebUI running locally, with a few different models I switch between depending on what I’m doing. The freedom that brings? Honestly, it’s fantastic. No hoops to jump through, no limits—just you and the model, on your own terms.

Of course, the big names still lead in some areas. But that lead is shrinking. And the real disruption isn’t just about the tech—it’s about the mindset. Open source doesn’t wait around. It doesn’t need permission. It just builds—and builds fast.

The giants might’ve sparked the flame, but open source is the one throwing logs on the fire and asking what’s next.