Accelerate AI development with Docling, Data Prep Kit, and BeeAI

Try these three open source projects to supercharge your AI workflow.

AI is evolving rapidly, and open source is playing a critical role in shaping its future. Sriram Raghavan, VP of IBM Research AI, highlights how the skepticism around open source AI as the community has accelerated the creation of open source state-of-the-art models, tools, and frameworks have become more accessible. In fact, the rate of innovation in open source AI has significantly outpaced innovations in the original open source software revolution.

Community innovation in open source AI started with models like Llama and Mistral, but quickly expanded to tools like LangChain, and now has advanced into agent frameworks like CrewAI and LlamaIndex. IBM has actively contributed to each of these spaces with its Granite family of foundation models, tools like InstructLab, Docling, and Data Prep Kit, and the BeeAI agent platform. These open source projects enable productivity across the modern genAI lifecycle.

Looking ahead, IBM is deepening its commitment to open source AI by contributing three major projects—Data Prep Kit, Docling, and BeeAI—to the Linux Foundation. These projects aim to streamline AI data preparation, document processing, and multi-agent orchestration and composition, respectively. Sriram emphasizes that AI’s full potential can only be realized through community-driven development, reinforcing the need for open collaboration to guide AI’s future.

Key takeaways

• Innovation in open source AI is accelerating and competitive– Once dismissed as doomed to be “always behind” closed AI, the massive breadth and depth of community participation has allowed open source AI to catch up to, and in some ways surpass, closed AI.
• Fit-for-purpose models are the future – Instead of one-size-fits-all AI, economic realities have caused the world to realize that “the right model for the job, customized” is the way to go.
• AI development must be accessible – Tools like Data Prep Kit, Docling, and BeeAI are open source projects now under open governance that power key parts of the genAI lifecycle.

Conclusion

AI’s future depends on the strength of its communities. IBM’s commitment to open source AI—through models, tools, and frameworks—demonstrates how collective innovation can drive meaningful progress. By embracing open collaboration, developers and enterprises alike can shape AI into a more practical, scalable, and widely beneficial technology.

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