The Atom Project: A U.S. Open Model Initiative

This talk covers everything that’s happened this year in the open model landscape — DeepSeek kickstarting the Chinese open model norms, Llama’s fade, Qwen’s dominance, GPT-OSS — and what comes next. It is my attempt to share what people need to know about where open models are heading, building on all of my research here at Interconnects and in my day job of training these models, in order to help us take the actions we need to steer it in a better direction.

I strongly recommend watching (or listening, as it’s in the podcast feed) if any of the discussions around open models or Chinese AI impacts your decision making. This felt like one of the better talks I’ve given in a bit and I’m excited to keep expanding my coverage here.

You can click through the slides here.

Thanks to the organizers of The Curve for inviting me (and encouraging me to give this talk), and for permission to post this video.

EDIT: I noticed sometimes the audio jumps weirdly, not sure what caused it (from slideslive export, raw is here: https://slideslive.com/39046297/open-models-in-2025-stakes-state-and-strategy)

Chapters

00:00 2025 so far05:53 China takes the lead15:54 What comes next21:20 What we should do25:00 Q & A

(Podcast feed / Audio only version trims 7 seconds of silence to start)

References & Recommended Reading

* The ATOM Project

* On China’s open-source community & trajectory

* Ranking China’s open AI labs

* On GPT-OSS

* Recent open models

* More on The Curve conference

Of course, you can watch on YouTube:

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and where ever you get your podcasts.

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