Open models have a few key use cases. Others—such hospitals, law firms, and governments—might need models that they can run locally for data security reasons. OpenAI has facilitated such activity by releasing its open models under a permissive Apache 2.0 license, which allows the models to be used for commercial purposes. Researchers who study how LLMs work also need open models, so that they can examine and manipulate those models in detail. The rise of Chinese open models like Qwen over the past year may have been a particularly salient factor in OpenAI’s calculus.