Open source projects draw equity-free funding from corporates, startups, and even VCs | TechCrunch

A dearth of funding for vital open source technologies is leading to a swath of support from startups, unicorns, corporations, and venture capital firms.

Silicon Valley VC Sequoia Capital launched an open source fellowship in 2023 to support project maintainers with equity-free capital to cover living expenses for up to 12 months .

Chatbot Arena is a popular open source AI model benchmarking tool used by many of the industry’s biggest names, including OpenAI , Meta , and Google .

AI and data infrastructure might be driving demand for open source technologies, but this demand creates significant costs for the project maintainers.

In addition to Sequoia ’s $ 100,000 contribution for the year , other public sponsors include Andreessen Horowitz , which donated as part of its inaugural open source AI grant program last year .

Sentry has upped its own budget to $ 750,000 this year to support open source software developers.

Beneficiaries through the years have included Django , Python, Rust, and Apache .

The Pledge has attracted “ecosystem partners” to endorse the pledge, including foundations, individuals, and even storied VC firm Accel .