I can’t help rooting for Arcee’s small open source AI developer

Arceea small 26-person startup in the US that created a large-scale, 400B-parameter LLM on a total of $20 millionit has produced its own new way of thinking. Arcee calls the Trinity Large Thinking model — and it’s the most open model “that’s been released by a non-Chinese company,” CEO Mark McQuade tells TechCrunch.

As this comment shows, Arcee has a goal I can’t support: It wants to give US and Western companies a model that doesn’t give them a reason to use Chinese.

Although the Chinese models are very capable, it is so are considered dangerousputting power, and possibly data, in the hands of a government that does not agree with all Western ideals.

With Arcee, companies can download the model, train it for their needs, and use it on site. Companies can also use Arcee’s cloud-based version, accessible through an API.

While Arcee’s models aren’t doing better than closed-source solutions from big labs like Anthropic or OpenAI, they’re not getting caught by these giants, either.

For example, Claude, who has exceptional writing skills, has become a popular choice for users of the AI ​​open source tool OpenClaw. But Anthropic removed them last week when it told users that their subscription to Anthropic it will no longer cover using OpenClaw – will have to pay in addition to that. (In February, OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger said he was joining Anthropic’s arch rival, OpenAI.)

In contrast, McQuade points out with pride data from OpenRouter which claims to be one of the top models used by OpenClaw.

So, how good is Trinity Large Thinking? It matches other top open brands, according to results shared with TechCrunch.

As we said beforeit’s not a head-to-head competitor to the big cheese among open-top US-built models: Meta’s Llama 4. But it doesn’t have any oddities either, not really. open source license issues of the Meta model. All versions of Arcee’s Trinity are released under the gold standard of the OS, Apache 2.0.

Just to be clear, there are many other US startups that offer open source models and, as a startup enthusiast, I’m downloading them as well.