Capital investment in the global AI industry is shifting focus from pursuing single top-tier models and computing hardware to heavily investing in open source platforms that control the "entrance and exit" of AI infrastructure, according to a September 1 report.
These platforms aggregate massive amounts of AI models, datasets, and developer resources, holding core traffic and distribution power in the AI industry ecosystem, making them prime targets for global capital.
China has become the core growth pole of the global open source AI ecosystem. According to Hugging Face's "2026 Spring Global Open Source AI Ecosystem Report," Chinese open source models account for 41% of downloads, surpassing the United States for the first time, with cumulative downloads exceeding 10 billion. MIT and Hugging Face joint research confirmed that China's open weight model global download share now ranks first worldwide.
Domestic open source AI sector saw collective breakthroughs in capital raising. In August 2026, OpenCSG completed a Pre-A round of hundreds of millions of yuan, while open source AI application platform dify.ai secured $30 million in Pre-A funding.
Open Source China (OSCHINA), a leading domestic platform, operates Gitee with over 20 million developers and 420,000 enterprise users, holding over 80% market share in core information technology application innovation sectors. Its AI model platform "Moark" provides full-stack services covering model data, computing power scheduling, and application development.
Notably, Open Source China achieved sustainable profitability with its innovative "open source + ecosystem + cloud service" three-tier business model, reporting 120% year-on-year revenue growth in 2025 and reaching tens of millions in profit scale, with a core customer repurchase rate exceeding 80%.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has explicitly stated that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, high-level AI open source communities will serve as core carriers for creating quality "AI + manufacturing" open source projects to empower real economy digital transformation.
Source: CNR / Tencent News
