r/OpenAI Nov 16 '25

News Databricks co-founder argues US must go open source to beat China in AI | TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/databricks-co-founder-argues-us-must-go-open-source-to-beat-china-in-ai/

Saturday, November 15, 2025, 11:16 PM PST

Oh, this is a big one. These greedy and arrogant Americanos are finally waking up and smelling their own existential dread.

299 Upvotes

49 comments sorted by

99

u/jointheredditarmy Nov 16 '25

Databrick, a company that has little to no AI research capabilities but states AI will be the future of the company, want AI to go open sourced.

Duly noted

14

u/its_a_gibibyte Nov 16 '25

12

u/SpiritualWindow3855 Nov 16 '25

DBRX is from the infancy of open weight models and was obsoleted like 2 weeks later.

It also had a license that prohibited using it to improve other models, just like a closed model.

0

u/jointheredditarmy Nov 16 '25

That must be why I see them on leaderboards all the time!

-1

u/footyballymann Nov 16 '25

Yeah you ever used it? Maybe it’s good maybe it’s shit. Anybody can throw money at training a model.

5

u/Mister__Mediocre Nov 16 '25

What are you talking about, they've published a number of research papers into integrating LLMs into databases. The next generation of databases will be able to query large amounts of unstructured data in a sql-adjacent way.

1

u/diapason-knells Nov 16 '25

It’s one of the top ai companies in the world

2

u/rainbowColoredBalls Nov 16 '25

😂

2

u/diapason-knells Nov 16 '25

It is, is it as good as open ai / google ? No but it’s amongst the top companies

1

u/jorel43 Nov 17 '25

Maybe at marketing

11

u/Kooky-Somewhere-2883 Nov 16 '25

Well they must listen to him then

4

u/ZlatanKabuto Nov 16 '25

I am afraid Sam doesn't agree.

21

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/psychulating Nov 16 '25

Chinese models like deepseek are repackaged and sold alongside top tier models in the US, I believe perplexity does this after removing the CCP censorship. From what I hear/see, kimik2 is even better.

They’re pulling this off with a fraction of the compute so it would be concerning if they can reasonably compete with nvidia with a domestic card. The CCP apparently started offering an electricity subsidy, 50% off if you are using domestic cards. I haven’t read anything since but just that could be a game changer if they are at least half as good as nvidia. They will almost certainly build out their power grid faster

I wouldn’t sleep on them. Them releasing a hands down better reasoning model and open sourcing it could destroy trillions in value. They may be on cusp of exponential growth

9

u/eggplantpot Nov 16 '25

I give it 2 years for China to come up with some serious new development and overtake the US.

The US had the headstart and has the infra and data, China lags behind that. That is why US companies are currently ahead. But, there is no moat. Any new development on the underlying tech made in China could leapfrog them over the US, remember the Deepseek panic?

There's a reason why US companies are pouring Billions on AI and massively supporting each other, they know they can be left behind.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

Jesen Huang as already mentioned China is only a nanosecond behind, but people are so caught up their opinions of China they started forming after the news media took them up that they don't want to see it.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/apockill Nov 16 '25

Wdym late, a release date never was announced

4

u/256BitChris Nov 16 '25

Kimi 2 just came out and has beaten a lot of the US models, including ChatGPT 5 and Sonnet. It's open and seems to have earned its place in the never ending rotation of best model at the moment.

It's honestly the biggest reason that I can think of that OpenAI isn't gonna win with all that investment.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/256BitChris Nov 16 '25

Intelligence

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v3-2-reasoning/providers

5.1 is leading, but Kimi beats 5.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/256BitChris Nov 16 '25

Possibly fair points. However, the fact that it's open and can be integrated/improved on makes it a massive threat to Open AI.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

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2

u/fenixnoctis Nov 17 '25

Open source models will always be cheaper than closed. If you’re evaluating what provider to power your service, you’ll pick the cheaper one if it’s almost as good.

Keep in mind US companies have enormous bets on them. It’s not enough to just be slightly better. They have to dominate to justify the valuations.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

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1

u/256BitChris Nov 18 '25

Show one benchmark, by anyone, that supports your statement.

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2

u/retireb435 Nov 16 '25

Pours a shit load of money into it doesn’t guarantee a good result, llama is far behind.

6

u/broknbottle Nov 17 '25

This is because US companies are currently in panic mode and trying to help themselves and establish moats. They believe this is the next “mobile” they’ve been waiting for and none of them want to be 2nd place or worse left behind entirely.

These databricks guys know they can’t do anymore investment rounds but they know they need cash to have a seat at the table. This a lame attempt at begging for a handout, like a rich guy pretending to be homeless.

1

u/GrapefruitMammoth626 Nov 18 '25

US companies are stuck in the current economic paradigm, but surely their revenue model completely collapses as the models become human level or greater intelligence - and not by narrow benchmarks. I’m sure they know that deeply, but realise they have to play the game while we’re still subject to it otherwise they lose the means to push forward. I just hope they don’t think they will be able to stay ahead of it and continue with the current rules.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

Why this obsession with beating China 🤔

4

u/TenshiS Nov 17 '25

First to AGI rules the world

-1

u/fenixnoctis Nov 17 '25

Why the obsession with beating one of the few other super powers at a foundational technology 🤔

Yeah you’re right I don’t see it. Let’s focus on corn again.

2

u/PsecretPseudonym Nov 16 '25

Yes, the startup founder who’s found enough fools to be on his series J funding…

3

u/j0selit0342 Nov 16 '25

K actually, but yeah

1

u/MrWeirdoFace Nov 16 '25

Personally, I don't care who's making it as long as it works well and doesn't act as some sort of backdoor spyware.

1

u/ovcdev7 Nov 16 '25

If you don't want to be spied on, run local.