Why Open Source AI Always Wins: Fenn and the Future of AI on your Mac

In November 2022, ChatGPT arrived and changed everything.
Two years later, it already feels like a decade ago.

Since then, generative AI has exploded. Closed-source labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have pushed the frontier of what large language models can do. From writing code to passing bar exams. The pace of innovation has been staggering. But for a while, it felt like this new wave of intelligence would always live behind APIs and walled gardens.

That’s no longer true.

Open Source Always Wins

There was a time when people believed that open source AI would never catch up to the giants like OpenAI or Anthropic. That the best models would only live behind paywalls, protected by billion-dollar R&D budgets. But those predictions were wrong.

Today, open source is not just catching up—it’s leading the charge.

Thanks to contributions from Deepseek, Meta, Mistral AI and Qwen, we now have world-class open models that rival or exceed their closed-source counterparts. And the best part? They’re not locked away in the cloud. They're available to everyone. You can run them on a GPU cluster and for the smallest ones on a MacBook Air.

This shift matters because it decentralizes innovation. It breaks the dependency on a few companies deciding what “intelligence” should look like. And it opens the door for tools like Fenn to build smarter, faster, more private experiences right on your machine.

How Fenn Uses Open Source to Power Smarter Search

Fenn is built for Mac users who want intelligent search without compromise. That means local, fast, and privacy-first. And behind the scenes, Fenn is powered by some of the best open source AI models in the world.

We use open source embedding models to understand your files. What does that mean? Think of it like this:

Instead of just matching keywords, Fenn translates your files into a kind of "map of meaning", so it can understand what your content is about, not just what it says. This is what enables semantic search: when you type something like “flag of France” or “presentation with pink neon typography,” Fenn actually gets it.

We break this down more in our article What Is Semantic Search? And Why Your Mac Needs It in 2025.

But keep in mind that Fenn can do keyword search too ! See Semantic vs Keyword.

These AI models don’t need to call home. Thanks to Apple Silicon and Apple’s MLX framework, they run entirely on your Mac. That means your data stays where it belongs: with you.

Want to learn more about the shift to local-first AI? Check out The Best Local AI Apps for Mac That Run on MLX in 2025.

Always Getting Better

The beauty of open source is that it evolves in public. Every month, new models are released. Some improve accuracy. Others reduce memory usage. Some make it possible to run powerful models on low-power hardware.

And each time a new model is released under a commercially permissible license, we test it. If it’s better, faster, or more efficient, we integrate it into Fenn. No waiting for some vague future product update. You get the best of what open source has to offer, right away.

Fenn doesn’t just sit on top of one big model. It’s a system built to grow alongside the community. That means your search engine gets smarter over time without you doing anything.

Open Source Builds Trust

Open source doesn’t just drive innovation. It builds accountability.

When the code and weights are available to the public, developers can audit what models do, how they’re trained, and what data they’ve seen. That kind of transparency is rare in AI and it’s essential if we want to build tools people can trust.

A study from Harvard Business School even found that open source not only drives faster development but creates more robust products over time. If you're curious, here's the full research paper on the value of open source.

We think that's exactly how your file search should work: fast, smart, and trustworthy.

Fenn Brings Apple Intelligence to Your Mac Today

Apple’s long-term vision for on-device intelligence is inspiring. They’ve made it clear that local AI is the future—and we agree. But while some of those features are still marked “coming soon,” Fenn is already delivering.

Fenn uses open source AI to make your Mac smarter today.
It finds ideas, not just filenames.
It understands meaning, not just metadata.
It does it all locally, privately, and intelligently.

So the next time you think, “I know I saw that somewhere”—you don’t have to wait for the future of AI to arrive. It’s already on your Mac. And it’s open source.

👉 Try Fenn now and experience what open source AI can really do.