Open Source on AI Brief | AI-101.tech

Nvidia Leads SiFive's $400M Round, Betting on Open-Source RISC-V AI Chips

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:00:00 +0800

Breaking the x86 and ARM Duopoly

SiFive’s products are based on RISC-V processor architecture — neither Intel’s x86 nor ARM. These two architectures currently almost completely monopolize the CPU supply feeding Nvidia GPU compute systems.

RISC-V is an open-source design that anyone can inspect, modify, and use. This contrasts sharply with x86’s closed proprietary model and ARM’s licensing approach. Previously RISC-V was mainly used in IoT devices and microcontrollers, but with this funding round, SiFive is targeting AI data center CPUs.

Meta Drops Muse Spark: $14.3B Overhaul, But the Door to Open Source Stays Closed

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On April 8, 2026, Meta dropped a bomb.

Not the “we have a new model come try it” kind. The kind that made the entire open-source AI community go quiet.

Muse Spark has arrived.

This is Meta’s first brand-new AI model in a year, and the first product from Meta’s newly formed Superintelligence Labs. Leading the charge: Alexandr Wang, poached from Scale AI. Zuckerberg spent $14.3 billion and gave Wang nine months to tear down and rebuild the entire AI infrastructure from scratch.

Databricks Co-Founder Wins ACM Award, Says We Should Stop Measuring AI by Human Standards

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Databricks co-founder and CTO Matei Zaharia almost missed the email telling him he’d won an award.

“Yeah, it was a surprise,” he said. The message informed him he’d become the recipient of the 2026 ACM Prize in Computing.

From Spark to Big Data Infrastructure: 17 Years

Flashback to 2009 — Zaharia was 28, a PhD student at UC Berkeley under Ion Stoica. He developed a technology that dramatically accelerated big data processing, named it Apache Spark, and released it as open source.