The creation of OpenFold was driven by former academics in industry who missed the collaborative models of academia. They saw that replicating DeepMind's restricted AlphaFold tool individually was a massive waste of resources and sought to re-establish a shared, open-source approach for foundational technologies.

OpenFold's strategy isn't just to provide a free tool. By releasing its training code and data, it enables companies to create specialized versions by privately fine-tuning the model on their own proprietary data. This allows firms to maintain a competitive edge while leveraging a shared, open foundation.

Vercel's CTO Malte Ubl outlines a third way for open source monetization beyond support (Red Hat) or open-core models. Vercel creates truly open libraries to grow the entire ecosystem. They find that as the overall "pie" grows, their relative slice remains constant, leading to absolute revenue growth.

Fears that universal tools reduce differentiation are misplaced. Instead of just leveling the playing field, open tools like OpenFold raise the entire industry's baseline capability. This shifts competition away from who builds the best foundational model to who can ask the most insightful scientific questions.

The choice between open and closed-source AI is not just technical but strategic. For startups, feeding proprietary data to a closed-source provider like OpenAI, which competes across many verticals, creates long-term risk. Open-source models offer "strategic autonomy" and prevent dependency on a potential future rival.

To avoid a future where a few companies control AI and hold society hostage, the underlying intelligence layer must be commoditized. This prevents "landlords" of proprietary models from extracting rent and ensures broader access and competition.

The key to Red Hat's commercial open-source business is providing value the community doesn't. While open-source communities focus on rapid innovation, enterprises require long-term (e.g., 10-year) support and stability for the software they deploy—a paid service that Red Hat provides.

To serve its largest customers, Square's open platform is crucial. It allows enterprises to integrate their preferred third-party tools with Square's core services. This flexibility prevents churn by allowing customers to customize their tech stack instead of being locked into a closed ecosystem.

Rather than just consuming technology, members of the OpenFold consortium are building businesses on top of it. Companies are providing specialized services like federated learning tools and SaaS platforms, demonstrating how a pre-competitive open technology can spawn a new ecosystem of commercial service providers.