Best Open-Source AI Projects to Follow in 2025
Explore the top open-source AI projects making waves in the tech community this year.
Whether you’re a developer looking to contribute, a researcher seeking powerful tools, or a tech enthusiast wanting to stay ahead, these projects are at the forefront of innovation. Open-source is where some of the most exciting AI advancements are happening — and 2025 is full of promising work.
🧠 1. OpenLLM by BentoML
OpenLLM provides a flexible, production-ready way to deploy and manage large language models like LLaMA, Mistral, and Falcon. It’s gaining momentum as developers look for alternatives to closed APIs like OpenAI and Claude.
- Why follow: Plug-and-play deployment of LLMs with custom fine-tuning support.
- GitHub: github.com/bentoml/OpenLLM
🧠 2. Hugging Face Transformers
Still leading the way in 2025, Hugging Face’s transformers library is the backbone of countless AI applications — from chatbots to summarizers and vision-language models.
- Why follow: Cutting-edge models, seamless API access, and a strong contributor community.
- GitHub: github.com/huggingface/transformers
🧠 3. LangChain
LangChain continues to evolve, now supporting a broader ecosystem for building autonomous agents, AI-driven apps, and chaining LLMs with tools.
- Why follow: Critical for building advanced AI applications like RAG pipelines and AI agents.
- GitHub: github.com/langchain-ai/langchain
🧠 4. FastChat by LMSYS
A powerful backend for multi-turn chat and LLM evaluation, used to build Chatbot Arena and compare open LLMs.
- Why follow: Ideal for LLM benchmarking, testing, and multi-model interaction.
- GitHub: github.com/lm-sys/FastChat
🧠 5. Auto-GPT & Agentic Frameworks
While the hype has calmed, Auto-GPT and newer agent frameworks remain essential for task automation and exploring autonomous AI behavior.
- Why follow: Useful for automation workflows, personal agents, and AI experimentation.
- GitHub: github.com/Torantulino/Auto-GPT
📈 Bonus: Keep an Eye On…
- Ollama – Run local models with ease
- Bloop – AI search for dev docs and repos
- MLX (by Apple) – Swift-based ML framework optimized for Apple Silicon
- Pythia – Open pretraining and model transparency from EleutherAI
🧰 Tips for Getting Involved
- Contribute: Fix issues, improve docs, or add examples.
- Experiment: Clone and test on your own data.
- Join communities: Reddit, Discord, and GitHub Discussions are goldmines.
💡 Final Thoughts
Open-source AI is driving innovation at full speed. Whether you want to build your own LLM app, train models, or contribute to real-world AI, these projects are worth following in 2025.
Stay tuned to Tech Empire for more deep dives, tutorials, and curated lists from the AI frontier.