Top 20 Hottest Open Source Startups of 2024

Explore the top 20 open source startups of 2024 that are leading innovation in the tech world. These startups are making significant strides with their groundbreaking solutions, community-driven projects, and disruptive technologies. Discover the most exciting companies shaping the future of open-source development and driving change across industries with their unique approaches and impactful contributions.

A new report highlights the 20 most popular open source startups globally, with over half focusing on AI. This report is produced by Runa Capital, a European venture capital firm that has maintained the Runa Open Source Startup (ROSS) Index since 2020. The Index tracks the fastest-growing projects based on GitHub “stars” and has evolved into an annual report since 2023, spotlighting the top commercial open source startups each year.

Last year’s report showed that AI and data infrastructure were key drivers of open source tools, with LangChain leading the ROSS Index. This year, AI remains central, featuring in 11 of the top 20 companies.

The ROSS Index is highly curated, only including projects linked to commercial companies, excluding side projects. These startups must be under 10 years old, have raised less than $100 million, and be independent entities.

In the 2024 ROSS Index, Ollama ranks first, a Y Combinator alum that developed an open-source tool for running LLMs like Meta’s Llama locally. Zed Industries, a cross-platform code editor, takes second place, followed by LangGenius, which offers an LLM app development platform called Dify.

The top five also include ComfyUI, a generative AI tool, and All Hands, the creator of OpenHands, a platform for software development agents.

The ROSS Index reveals the ongoing demand for AI and developer tooling, with other projects like PDF tool Stirling PDF and remote software RustDesk showing strong demand for privacy-focused open-source solutions. Fuel, a project focused on Ethereum blockchain, demonstrates that crypto and Web3 are still thriving.

San Francisco is home to six of the top 20 startups, with Canada, Europe, Singapore, and China rounding out the list. The methodology behind the ROSS Index uses GitHub stars to track growth and focuses on the relative increase in stars over 90 days, which provides a more accurate picture of project growth.

Though GitHub stars are not a perfect metric, Runa Capital's approach offers valuable insights into trending open-source technologies and the commercial companies building around them. The report uses the "commercial perception" of open source, allowing projects under licenses like the Server Side Public License (SSPL) to qualify, even if not officially recognized by the Open Source Initiative.

For questions or comments write to writers@bostonbrandmedia.com

Source: techcrunch‍