A brand new report showcases the 20 top-trending open supply startups around the globe, 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 by way of GitHub “stars” — a metric that’s one thing akin to a “like” on social media. Starting in 2023, Runa began producing annual stories, highlighting the preferred industrial open supply startups in a given yr.
Final yr’s report demonstrated that AI and knowledge 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 an analogous story, with AI central to 11 of the highest 20 corporations.
It’s value noting that the ROSS Index is closely curated and doesn’t embrace any previous open supply undertaking. Qualifying initiatives have to be carefully linked to a industrial firm (i.e., a vendor-led undertaking), which means no aspect initiatives. Moreover, these corporations have to be youthful than 10 years previous; raised lower than $100 million in funding; and be totally impartial — 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 instrument for operating LLMs akin to Meta’s Llama and DeepSeek regionally (i.e., desktop). Ollama’s GitHub star rely elevated by some 76,000 by way of 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 listing is Zed Industries, a cross-platform collaborative code editor “designed for high-performance collaboration with people and AI.” The Zed undertaking has been round for some time, however 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 referred to as Dify. The undertaking attained greater than 43,000 new GitHub stars final yr, rising 326% from round 13,000 to just about 57,000 — a determine that has since surged to greater than 84,000 stars.
After which there’s ComfyUI, an open supply node-based program for producing photographs, movies, and audio utilizing generative AI fashions. The undertaking’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 referred to as OpenHands for constructing software program growth brokers. OpenHands garnered 39,600 GitHub stars from its launch final March by way of 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 reveals how developer tooling remains to be scorching on the earth 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 instrument 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) reveals 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; nonetheless, industrial entities normally have some heart of gravity — even when it simply means the place it has been formally included.
The ROSS Index for final yr reveals that San Francisco is house to 6 of the highest 20 ROSS startups, whereas Canada has three, and Europe (U.Okay., Switzerland, Hungary, and Czech Republic), Singapore, and China constituting the remainder.
Methodology
There are different methods of monitoring “scorching” open supply initiatives. Two Sigma Ventures operates the Open Supply Index, which is analogous in idea to the ROSS Index besides it showcases the highest 100 initiatives with out a particular give attention to industrial startups (it additionally gives alternative ways of filtering the info).
And GitHub itself gives a top-trending undertaking listing, once more with out the particular give attention to industrial companies.
It’s additionally value wanting on the methodology behind the ROSS Index. GitHub “stars” will be an imperfect metric, because it merely reveals that somebody has “appreciated” the undertaking, 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 stories, and on absolutely the variety of new stars gained through the yr for its annual report.
This additionally implies that the annual report can look fairly completely different to the quarterly stories, on condition that absolute star counts gained’t at all times align with fast relative-growth patterns.
There might also be some points round what’s classed as “open supply.” Whereas most of the initiatives on the listing have certainly been launched below a acknowledged copyleft or permissive open supply license, this isn’t a strict stipulation of the ROSS Index. Runa says it adheres to the “industrial notion” of open supply, slightly than the official open supply definition. As such, an organization that has launched its software program below 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 supply.”
Nonetheless, the Index is a helpful indicator not solely of what sorts of open supply expertise is trending, but in addition what corporations are attempting to construct companies atop them.
