Over the weekend I had Codex parse 500K arXiv AI/ML papers since ChatGPT to understand which open models are used for research.
In 2024, ~30% of papers mentioned an American open model and only 10% a Chinese model.
Today, ~40% of papers mention a Chinese (open) LLM, and only 25-30% an American one. Chinese models are the default for research. Chinese mentions are still growing while American open models are stagnating.
When looking at this data it's important to remember that papers substantially lag model releases, as research takes a long time. Qwen's steady growth is reflective of this, but so is Llama's lasting power.
Some more observations:
- Qwen has been steadily growing, and today 1/3 of papers which mention any LLM mention qwen. OpenAI's closed models are the highest overall, at ~37%.
- Llama peaked around April of 2025 at 30% of papers which mention any LLM (including ChatGPT etc). Llama 4 was released at about the same time, and Llama has been declining since.
- Gemini and Claude are less common than the leading open models, mentioned in 10-15% of papers puts them behind all of Qwen, Llama, and DeepSeek. Open models should be and are the foundations of open research.
The % of papers mentioning any LLM have been steadily climbing since 2023. | Year | January | April | July | October | | 2023 | 10.43% | 15.39% | 18.69% | 32.18% | | 2024 | 29.70% | 33.93% | 35.70% | 44.25% | | 2025 | 39.23% | 45.28% | 44.94% | 53.52% | | 2026 | 55.49% | 57.26% | 53.14% | TBD
Now over 50% of AI papers, from 10% in 2023.
Other notes: • Gemma and Mistral hover around 5-10%. • Our beloved fully-open Olmo models have been ~1% since the first release in Jan. 2024. • DeepSeek has a clear jump after R1 in Jan. 2025 • Data derived from the most popular ML arXiv categories: cs. AI, cs. CL, cs. CV, cs. LG, stat. ML
Just like our downloads and derivative model data, this is updated daily on the Interconnects Open Model Dashboard.