Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has voiced strong support for open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models, echoing positions long supported by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Speaking on Monday (October 12) at an industry panel hosted by lender DBS, Tan highlighted the rapid rise and cost advantages of open frontier systems developed in China, calling open architecture the primary engine for technological efficiency. According to Tan (via news agency Reuters), Chinese frontier AI platforms, including DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, are seeing “very fast” global adoption because their token running costs are noticeably lower while delivering results that are functionally “good enough.”“I’m a strong believer of open source, that’s the best way to drive efficiency,” Tan said during the session, emphasising that commercial markets will ultimately determine which model architectures deliver the greatest value across specific use cases.Looking further ahead at computing hardware, Tan projected that quantum computing could reach mainstream commercial adoption within the next three to five years, adding that software will be essential in managing the infrastructure needed to run it efficiently.
Intel chief echoes Jensen Huang and Yann LeCun
Tan’s public endorsement places him in alignment with key figures in the semiconductor and AI research landscape who advocate for open ecosystems alongside closed, proprietary systems. Prominent computer scientist Yann LeCun, Meta’s former chief AI scientist, has long stood as one of the industry’s most vocal proponents of open-source artificial intelligence models.“Open source AI models will soon become unbeatable. Period,” LeCun said in a post in 2023, adding, “The future will consist of– a small number of open source inference code,– free pre-trained base models, and– crowd-sourced fine-tuned models, on top of which customized (possibly closed source) products will be built.”He has advocated for open-source AI models since then on social media websites and in various interviews.Similarly, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang recently emphasised the necessity of open architectures in an open letter signed by the chipmaker. In his first post on X (formerly Twitter), he said:“AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country. Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.”
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