A new report has unveiled the top 20 fastest-growing open source startups worldwide, highlighting the sectors driving innovation. Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) remains at the forefront, with over half of these startups heavily invested in AI-powered technologies.
Open Source Innovation in the Startup Ecosystem
The rankings come from European venture capital firm Runa Capital, which has been tracking the open source landscape through its Runa Open Source Startup (ROSS) Index since 2020. This index, updated quarterly, monitors the fastest-growing open source projects based on their GitHub star count—a measure akin to social media “likes.” In 2023, Runa Capital began publishing an annual report that provides a comprehensive snapshot of the most promising commercial open source startups.
Last year’s report demonstrated the rising demand for AI and data infrastructure solutions, with LangChain emerging as the leader for its open source framework designed for building large language model (LLM)-driven applications. This year, the trend continues, with 11 out of the top 20 startups focusing on AI-driven technologies.
Image Credits: ROSS Index: Runa Capital
How the ROSS Index Selects Open Source Startups
The ROSS Index is more than just a GitHub popularity contest. It carefully curates its selections, ensuring only commercial open source startups make the cut. To qualify, a project must:
- Be directly tied to a commercial company (no side projects or academic endeavors).
- Be under 10 years old.
- Have raised less than $100 million in funding.
- Operate as an independent entity (not a subsidiary or publicly traded company).
This methodology ensures that the startups featured in the ROSS Index are not only popular among developers but also have viable business models and commercial potential.
The 5 Fastest-Rising Open Source Startups of 2024
1. Ollama – The Open Source LLM Powerhouse
Sitting at the top of the 2024 ROSS Index is Ollama, a Y Combinator-backed company revolutionizing local LLM execution. Ollama provides an open source tool that allows users to run LLMs, such as Meta’s Llama and DeepSeek, on their own hardware rather than relying on cloud-based AI solutions. In 2024, Ollama’s GitHub star count skyrocketed by 76,000, marking a 261% increase and pushing its total past 135,000 stars in just a few months.
2. Zed Industries – The AI-Powered Code Collaboration Tool
Zed Industries takes second place with its high-performance collaborative code editor designed for seamless teamwork between human developers and AI-powered assistants. Although Zed has been around for some time, it officially went open source in January 2024. The decision paid off, leading to 52,000 new GitHub stars throughout the year.
3. LangGenius (Dify) – Streamlining LLM App Development
LangGenius is the force behind Dify, an open source development platform for LLM-powered applications. As demand for AI-enhanced apps grows, so has Dify’s popularity. Over the past year, the project’s GitHub stars surged by 326%, jumping from 13,000 to nearly 57,000. Today, Dify has exceeded 84,000 stars.
4. ComfyUI – A Generative AI Playground
ComfyUI secures fourth place with its open source, node-based interface for generating images, videos, and audio using generative AI models. The project experienced a 195% growth in GitHub stars in 2024, reaching 61,900 stars.
5. All Hands (OpenHands) – AI-Driven Developer Agents
All Hands, the company behind OpenHands, rounds out the top five with its AI-powered developer automation platform. Since launching in March 2024, OpenHands has attracted 39,600 GitHub stars, growing rapidly in the open source ecosystem.
Trends Shaping Open Source Innovation
While AI dominates this year’s rankings, developer tooling remains a major area of growth in open source. Zed and UV (by Astral, ranked No. 9) highlight the ongoing demand for innovative software development solutions. Meanwhile, the presence of Stirling PDF (No. 7), Maybe Finance (No. 8), and RustDesk (No. 17) suggests that privacy-focused, self-hostable tools continue to resonate with users who seek more control over their data.
Despite the volatility of the crypto market, Ethereum-based Fuel (No. 12) shows that blockchain and Web3 technologies are still gaining traction in open source development.
Open Source Innovation Across the Globe
By nature, open source software thrives on global collaboration, with contributors from every corner of the world shaping its growth. However, commercial startups often gravitate toward specific tech hubs. The ROSS Index reveals that San Francisco remains the leading hotspot, home to six of the top 20 startups. Canada follows with three companies, while Europe (UK, Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic), Singapore, and China round out the rest of the list.
Measuring the Popularity of Open Source Projects
The ROSS Index isn’t the only benchmark for tracking open source trends. Other notable methodologies include:
- Two Sigma Ventures’ Open Source Index, which ranks the top 100 projects without restricting the list to commercial startups.
- GitHub’s trending project list, which provides an organic view of open source projects gaining traction across the platform.
While GitHub “stars” are a useful indicator of project interest, they don’t necessarily equate to active adoption. Older projects naturally accumulate more stars over time, so Runa Capital focuses on relative star growth over a 90-day period for quarterly reports and absolute star gains for its annual report.
Additionally, the definition of “open source” in the ROSS Index is slightly flexible. While many projects adhere to traditional open source licensing models, Runa Capital acknowledges the broader commercial perception of open source. This means projects using licenses like the Server Side Public License (SSPL), which isn’t officially recognized by the Open Source Initiative, can still qualify.
Open Source: A Bellwether for Tech’s Future
The 2024 ROSS Index provides invaluable insight into the rapid evolution of open source startups. AI-driven technologies continue to dominate, but developer tools, privacy-focused software, and blockchain solutions are proving their staying power. As more startups embrace open source models, the ecosystem will remain a driving force behind the next generation of tech innovation.
