Mozilla’s recently announced Builders program supports projects that advance the cause of open source AI. Our inaugural theme is “Local AI”: AI-powered applications that can run entirely locally on consumer devices like desktops, laptops, and smartphones. We are keenly interested in this area because it fosters greater privacy and control by putting AI technology directly into the hands of users. It also democratizes AI development by reducing costs, making powerful tools accessible to individual developers and small communities.

As a part of Mozilla Builders, we’ve launched an accelerator that developers can apply to join, but in parallel we have also been proactively recruiting specific open source projects that we feel have the potential to move AI forward and would benefit from Mozilla’s investment, expertise, and support. Our first such Builders project is *llamafile*, led by open source developer Justine Tunney.…