Qwen2.5-VL-32B: Smarter and Lighter

Big day for open source Chinese model releases - DeepSeek-v3-0324 came out today too, an updated version of DeepSeek v3 now under an MIT license (previously it was a custom DeepSeek license). https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/24/deepseek/

Pretty soon I won't be using any American models. It'll be a 100% Chinese open source stack.

The foundation model companies are screwed. Only shovel makers (Nvidia, infra companies) and product companies are going to win.

I still don't get where the money for new open source models is going to come from once setting investor dollars on fire is no longer a viable business model. Does anyone seriously expect companies to keep buying and running thousands of ungodly expensive GPUs, plus whatever they spend on human workers to do labelling/tuning, and then giving away the spoils for free, forever?

Maybe from NVIDIA? "Commoditize your product's complement".

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

This is the reason IMO. Fundamentally China right now is better at manufacturing (e.g. robotics). AI is the complement to this - AI increases the demand for tech manufactured goods. Whereas America is in the opposite position w.r.t which side is their advantage (i.e. the software). AI for China is an enabler into a potentially bigger market which is robots/manufacturing/etc.

Commoditizing the AI/intelligence part means that the main advantage isn't the bits - its the atoms. Physical dexterity, social skills and manufacturing skills will gain more of a comparative advantage vs intelligence work in the future as a result - AI makes the old economy new again in the long term. It also lowers the value of AI investments in that they no longer can command first mover/monopoly like pricing for what is a very large capex cost undermining US investment in what is their advantage. As long as it is strategic, it doesn't necessarily need to be economic on its own.