Artifacts 22: Zyphra, Cohere, and Poolside are expanding the breadth of the ecosystem
Interconnects · Florian Brand · 2026-06-28
Interconnects' Artifacts 22 surveys recent open model releases from Zyphra, Cohere, Poolside, and NVIDIA, arguing the open model ecosystem is diversifying beyond a few Chinese players into distinct categories of pure model makers, big tech, and product companies.
Appears in
Extraction
Topics: open-source-modelsmodel-ecosystemcohere-command-apoolsidenvidia-nemotronzyphra
Claims
- The open model ecosystem is becoming more diverse, shifting from dominance by a handful of Chinese players to include more niche global companies.
- Open model makers fall into three categories: pure model makers, big tech companies, and product companies, each with distinct motivations for releasing weights.
- Cohere released Command A+ (218B-A25B MoE) under Apache 2.0, a significant change from its previous non-commercial license.
- Poolside announced open weights as its default release policy going forward.
- Attempts to restrict the open model ecosystem would concentrate AI development among a select few and are characterized as both futile and unsafe.
Key quotes
Attempts to slow or ban this ecosystem are not only futile, as the history of tech-related bans has shown, but also unsafe and anti-freedom. Such restrictions would concentrate AI development and usage among the select few.
Open weights are now our default. We'll keep building toward the frontier and releasing increasingly capable models in the open. (Poolside)
This diversity of makers and models fits our hypothesis that more companies will develop a long-tail of models and the number of companies chasing the absolute, open frontier will diminish.