AI Glossary

Open weights

Also called open-weight model

A model whose trained parameters are published for anyone to download and run. Open weights are not the same as open source: the Open Source Initiative's definition also asks for the code and detailed information about the training data.

See also

  • Parameters

    The numbers inside a model, its weights and biases, that are set during training and together hold what it learned.

  • Foundation model

    A large model trained on broad data that can be adapted to many different tasks, like the models behind chat assistants.

  • Distillation

    Training a smaller model to reproduce a larger model's outputs, aiming to keep much of the larger one's ability at a fraction of the cost to run.

Source: Open Source Initiative, The Open Source AI Definition 1.0 (opens in a new tab)

Cite this term.

CC BY 4.0, attribution required.

This term

Orbyt Labs, Open weights (AI Glossary), Oct 18, 2026. https://www.orbytlabs.ai/orbyt-collective/glossary/open-weights

The dataset (JSON)

Orbyt Labs Glossaries (Oct 19, 2026), https://www.orbytlabs.ai/glossary#dataset

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