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Open source projects draw equity-free funding from corporates, startups, and even VCs
- Various sector players are stepping up with funding initiatives to support open-source tech including startups, corporations, and venture capital firms.
- While some open source software has the potential to be commercialised, many projects are difficult to monetise.
- Funding programmes include reactive initiatives such as the $30m pledge launched in response to the Log4Shell security flaw, and proactive offerings driven by various industry giants.
- Sequoia Capital has launched an open source fellowship to support project maintainers with equity-free capital of up to $100,000 for up to 12 months, while Andreessen Horowitz launched an open source AI grant program in 2020.
- Chatbot Arena and vLLM are two projects selected for Sequoia’s fellowship. Both were birthed out of UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab and have PhD researchers working on them. These were funded by Sequoia at $100K each for this year.
- Founder of AI Factory, Eno Reyes, has confirmed that his company uses Chatbot Arena to keep track of the top LLM options.
- Sentry, a developer tooling unicorn, has launched the Open Source Pledge to encourage companies to get involved in donating to open source projects.
- The Open Source Pledge calls for contributions of at least $2,000 per year for each developer on staff.
- Sentry has committed $750,000 this year and has over two dozen members signed up to the Pledge at the time of writing.
- Accel partner Dan Levine said, The open source community, particularly on the demand side, needs to reassess its strategies and make more informed decisions to support critical projects".
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