A brand new report showcases the 20 top-trending open supply startups world wide, greater than half of that are carefully aligned with AI.
The report is the handiwork of European enterprise capital agency Runa Capital, which has operated the Runa Open Supply Startup (ROSS) Index since 2020. The Index serves quarterly updates on the fastest-growing initiatives when it comes to GitHub “stars” — a metric that’s one thing akin to a “like” on social media. Starting in 2023, Runa began producing annual reviews, highlighting the most well-liked industrial open supply startups in a given yr.
Final yr’s report demonstrated that AI and information infrastructure had been driving demand for open supply tooling, with LangChain hitting pole place within the ROSS Index for its open supply framework for constructing LLM-centric apps.
This yr it’s the same story, with AI central to 11 of the highest 20 corporations.
It’s price noting that the ROSS Index is closely curated and doesn’t embrace any outdated open supply mission. Qualifying initiatives have to be carefully linked to a industrial firm (i.e., a vendor-led mission), that means no aspect initiatives. Moreover, these corporations have to be youthful than 10 years outdated; raised lower than $100 million in funding; and be solely unbiased — so not a subsidiary or publicly listed.
Stargazing
In high spot on the 2024 ROSS Index is Ollama, a Y Combinator alum that’s constructed an open supply software for working LLMs equivalent to Meta’s Llama and DeepSeek domestically (i.e., desktop). Ollama’s GitHub star rely elevated by some 76,000 by 2024, rising 261% to greater than 105,000 (it has since risen to greater than 135,000 stars over the previous few months).
Subsequent on the record is Zed Industries, a cross-platform collaborative code editor “designed for high-performance collaboration with humans and AI.” The Zed mission has been round for some time, nevertheless it solely went open supply in January 2024, and thru the remainder of the yr it gained greater than 52,000 GitHub stars.
In third place is LangGenius, the corporate behind an open supply LLM app growth platform known as Dify. The mission attained greater than 43,000 new GitHub stars final yr, rising 326% from round 13,000 to almost 57,000 — a determine that has since surged to greater than 84,000 stars.
After which there may be ComfyUI, an open supply node-based program for producing photographs, movies, and audio utilizing generative AI fashions. The mission’s GitHub star rely grew 195% to 61,900 stars final yr.
Rounding out the highest 5 is All Fingers, the corporate behind an open supply platform known as OpenHands for constructing software program growth brokers. OpenHands garnered 39,600 GitHub stars from its launch final March by the top of 2024 and has since added one other 12,000 stars to the combo.
Whereas the ROSS Index for final yr illustrates the explosive progress in AI and LLMs, it additionally exhibits how developer tooling remains to be scorching on this planet of open supply, with the likes of Zed and Astral’s UV (No. 9) each that includes within the high 10. Elsewhere, the presence of PDF manipulation software Stirling PDF (No. 7), finance administration software program Perhaps Finance (No. 8), and distant desktop software program RustDesk (No. 17) suggests privacy-focused self-hostable tooling remains to be in excessive demand.
And Ethereum blockchain-focused Gas (No. 12) exhibits that crypto/web3 is alive and kicking.
Open supply software program by its very nature has at all times been distributed, on condition that contributors from all corners of the globe can become involved. That is typically the case for vendor-led initiatives, too; nevertheless, industrial entities normally have some middle of gravity — even when it simply means the place it has been formally integrated.
The ROSS Index for final yr exhibits that San Francisco is residence to 6 of the highest 20 ROSS startups, whereas Canada has three, and Europe (U.Ok., Switzerland, Hungary, and Czech Republic), Singapore, and China constituting the remainder.
Methodology
There are different methods of monitoring “hot” open supply initiatives. Two Sigma Ventures operates the Open Supply Index, which has similarities in idea to the ROSS Index besides it showcases the highest 100 initiatives with no particular give attention to industrial startups (it additionally provides alternative ways of filtering the info).
And GitHub itself provides a top-trending mission record, once more with out the particular give attention to industrial companies.
It’s additionally price wanting on the methodology behind the ROSS Index. GitHub “stars” may be an imperfect metric, because it merely exhibits that somebody has “liked” the mission, versus actively utilizing or monitoring it. Older initiatives will naturally have procured extra “stars,” too, which is why Runa focuses on the relative progress of repositories over a 90-day interval for its quarterly reviews, and on absolutely the variety of new stars gained in the course of the yr for its annual report.
This additionally signifies that the annual report can look fairly completely different to the quarterly reviews, on condition that absolute star counts received’t at all times align with fast relative-growth patterns.
There may be some points round what’s classed as “open source.” Whereas most of the initiatives on the record have certainly been launched beneath a acknowledged copyleft or permissive open supply license, this isn’t a strict stipulation of the ROSS Index. Runa says it adheres to the “commercial perception” of open supply, somewhat than the official open supply definition. As such, an organization that has launched its software program beneath the Server Aspect Public License (SSPL), as an illustration, would nonetheless qualify as open supply, regardless that the Open Supply Initiative has not rubberstamped the SSPL as “open source.”
Nonetheless, the Index is a helpful indicator not solely of what sorts of open supply expertise is trending, but in addition what corporations try to construct companies atop them.
