Open-Source Model Momentum & Local AI

Qwen 27B matches closed-source SOTA on consumer hardware. DeepSeek Flash sees 100x usage surge. Google Gemma reaches 1B downloads. Token share for open models now 62% (up from 28% two months ago). Hugging Face reportedly in talks for $13B acquisition, raising questions about open-source distribution and platform neutrality. Alibaba open-sources MiniMax-H3 ControlNet-Union. Local AI tools proliferate, reducing API dependency.