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The article analyzes the motives of companies and countries behind releasing open-weight artificial intelligence models for free, from expanding GPU and cloud-service sales to gaining global technological influence. It argues that the rise of local models does not mean the end of cloud AI, but rather expands organizations’ options and gives them greater flexibility in distributing workloads.
ITmedia argues that growing interest in running large language models locally is explained not only by concerns about reliance on cloud services, but also by the maturation of three elements: open-weight models, hardware, and software. The first part of the series focuses on the evolution of models, with DeepSeek, Qwen, and other Chinese models emerging prominently.