/Tech8h ago

AI Alliance launches Project Tapestry to co-train open frontier models and counter Chinese AI dominance

Story Overview

The AI Alliance is coordinating a global effort to train a shared open foundation model through distributed contributions, giving partners the base improvements they need while each keeps full control over private data and builds fully owned derivatives tuned to local languages, laws, or priorities.

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Original post

Yann LeCun@ylecun#3inTech

@HarryStebbings The answer is Project Tapestry https://thealliance.ai/projects/tapestry

Harry Stebbings@HarryStebbings

“We have a crisis of open source models in the Western world.

Outside of China, there are no good open source models. We don't even have any in the US now.

The talent, the capital and the focus to be best-in-class at pre-training, mid-training, post-training is an extremely scarce skillset.

The answer for a lot of countries may just be to take an open weights model from China, post-train or fine-tune their own version, and have that be what they start from." @EverettRandle

Why does the West have such poor open source models and is it a national security threat to rely on open-source Chinese models @demishassabis @ylecun @aidangomez @lilianweng @janleike

2:57 AM · Jun 20, 2026 · 9.5K Views

Developer Impact

Training stays distributed by design

Partners run local updates on their own compute and data, sharing only aggregated weights back into the common model so sensitive information never leaves its original jurisdiction.

Open Question

Timeline hinges on technical proofs

Phase 0 work on cultural realignment demos and data catalogs is already live, yet later stages that deliver the first full-scale base model remain gated by compute commitments and governance details that are still taking shape.

Sentiment

Positive users voice hope for Project Tapestry succeeding in open source AI and praise the team as cool, while negative users mock Yann LeCun and complain the project ignores emails.

Pos

50.0%

Neg

50.0%

4 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Related links

Tapestry

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Alexander Doria@Dorialexander

Happy to be onboard.

Yann LeCun@ylecun

@HarryStebbings The answer is Project Tapestry https://thealliance.ai/projects/tapestry

2h3K396

xlr8harder@xlr8harder

I'd be pleased to see a project like this succeed, and I can see why the idea is attractive, but I think it's a mistake to emphasize the federated-ish approach and that doing so will ultimately limit the project's overall impact.

Yann LeCun@ylecun

@HarryStebbings The answer is Project Tapestry https://thealliance.ai/projects/tapestry

1h72430

Piotr Mazurek@tugot17

@Dorialexander it is like early Prime Intellect but state owned?

2h671

Alexander Doria@Dorialexander

@tugot17 Much looser and I’m expecting more things on the data/multicultural side.

2h361

xlr8harder@xlr8harder

None of the problems I'm talking about are insurmountable, but it does seem like it will be a continual source of inefficiency and friction for the lifetime of a project like this.

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