Hacker ApprovedDepartments

Olmo by Ai2

Hacker Approved

Ranked 16 of 39 open-weight language models by recommenders

Ai2's fully open language model releases weights, training data, code and checkpoints, so people recommend it as the most transparent option, though it trails top closed models.

Ai2's fully open language model releases weights, training data, code and checkpoints, so people recommend it as the most transparent option, though it trails top closed models.

56 people gave an opinion

recommend it
47
criticize it
9
approval share
84%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 12 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it carries the badge

  • 47 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 5.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
  • Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Fully open data, code, weights

    “AI2 complete transparency including training data, code, intermediate checkpoints, and detailed logs for reproducibility and scientific rigor”

    Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative”

    “I really appreciate that you all are releasing true open source models complete with data, training code and weights.”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “very compelling capabilities where the dataset, training process, and final weights are all open”

    Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Mozilla: The state of open source AI”
  • Competitive with open-weight models

    “We are competitive with open weights models in general, just a couple points behind best Qwen.”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “this one is the closest to being competitive with closed models”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “fully open source models that are comparable to o1-mini (OLMo)”

    Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Unsloth GLM-5.2 – How to Run Locally”
  • Runs well on own hardware

    “there is a broad practical application served here for developers who need to figure out a project on their own hardware”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “This type of model is as open as is physically possible, and represents a real improvement in user agency”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “That 7B model also worked well in my experiments on a laptop.”

    Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models”
  • Checks corporate control of AI

    “a huge achievement for a truly open source model, and a necessary check and balance on corporate control of AI”

    Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “Allen AI do not get enough love. They are doing GenAI how it should have always been done.”

    Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI”

    “Allen AI is fighting the good fight with their Olmo models”

    Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Mozilla: The state of open source AI”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Behind top closed models

    “Olmo 3 from AllenAI, and K2 Think V2 from Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence are both fully open, but not as capable as the Nemotron family.”

    Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “GLM 5.2 Is Out”

    “It's not super helpful, especially as a sovereign government initiative to build an also-ran”

    Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative”

    “It is not on the “frontier” in any meaningful way.”

    Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Notes on DeepSeek”
  • Training data sourcing questioned

    “Not Open, just willing to state what they fed into the training.”

    Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “K2 Horizon: A connected fleet of six open models”

    “This olmo uses random data of totally infringing license database such a StackEdu”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Chatto is now Open Source”
  • Unstable over longer conversations

    “mine would perform very poorly when the conversation got past 1 turn”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “Worked for the first message but got progressively more unstable.”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “It might be an OpenWebUI bug but not so promising”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”
  • Factual errors in answers

    “it admitted that it left out the fourth stomach because it was small, and claimed that the rumination wasn't "true" in some sense”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “Giraffes are not kosher because they do not chew their cud, even though they have split hooves.”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

    “I'm wondering why it thinks that it was developed by OpenAI.”

    Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

Other open-weight language models people recommend

The four most recommended other open-weight language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

Olmo by Ai2 compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Qwen 3.8 27B1,17342673%132 mo32 ownersApproved
Z.ai GLM1,04338473%132 mo52 ownersApproved
Kimi93135972%131 mo26 ownersApproved
Gemma 471324974%131 mo14 ownersApproved
Olmo by Ai2This page47984%12—Approved
See all 39 open-weight language models, ranked

What people said

40 of the 65 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“Ai2 (Ollmo, Tulu, ...) and the recent model from Aleph Alpha if you want to learn more.”

RecommendsComment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Beam: Reflection's 501B open-weight model”

“Not Open, just willing to state what they fed into the training.”

MixedComment from 4 Sep 2026 in “K2 Horizon: A connected fleet of six open models”

“There are models that do that, for example the Olmo family of models”

RecommendsComment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Quasar 438B: Europe's Leading AI Model”

“That 7B model also worked well in my experiments on a laptop.”

RecommendsComment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models”

“no one is using Olmo for "serious" work”

CriticizesComment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models”

“It's not super helpful, especially as a sovereign government initiative to build an also-ran”

CriticizesComment from 8 Aug 2026 in “U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative”

“AI2 complete transparency including training data, code, intermediate checkpoints, and detailed logs for reproducibility and scientific rigor”

RecommendsComment from 8 Aug 2026 in “U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative”

“We have models here in the states like OLMo that could receive more investing”

RecommendsComment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Startup founders urge Trump not to shut off Chinese open weight AI”

“Allen AI is fighting the good fight with their Olmo models”

RecommendsComment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Mozilla: The state of open source AI”

“very compelling capabilities where the dataset, training process, and final weights are all open”

RecommendsComment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Mozilla: The state of open source AI”

“This olmo uses random data of totally infringing license database such a StackEdu”

CriticizesComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Chatto is now Open Source”

“Check out the OLMo family from the Allen Institute for AI”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Chatto is now Open Source”

“Ai2's OLMo, EleutherAI's Pythia, and LLM360's Amber are actually open source, top to bottom”

RecommendsComment from 6 Jul 2026 in “The Private Capture of Public Genius”

“ethically sourced, open source LLMs exist! Check out eg Olmo by Allen AI”

RecommendsComment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K2.7 Code is generally available in GitHub Copilot”

“fully open source models that are comparable to o1-mini (OLMo)”

RecommendsComment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Unsloth GLM-5.2 – How to Run Locally”

“Allen AI do not get enough love. They are doing GenAI how it should have always been done.”

RecommendsComment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI”

“Olmo 3 from AllenAI, and K2 Think V2 from Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence are both fully open, but not as capable as the Nemotron family.”

MixedComment from 14 Jun 2026 in “GLM 5.2 Is Out”

“If you really want to see fully open training pipelines for modern LLMs, Olmo”

RecommendsComment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Open Reproduction of DeepSeek-R1”

“It is not on the “frontier” in any meaningful way.”

CriticizesComment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Notes on DeepSeek”

“sharing not just models and even training data, but also the training code and methodologies”

RecommendsComment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Notes on DeepSeek”

“where the have open weights, checkpoints, training data, and training process”

RecommendsComment from 24 Apr 2026 in “DeepSeek v4”

“Weights, datasets, code, multiple checkpoints...”

RecommendsComment from 24 Mar 2026 in “iPhone 17 Pro Demonstrated Running a 400B LLM”

“one of the only really good models with open training data”

RecommendsComment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Soft Contamination Means Benchmarks Test Shallow Generalization”

“performance-competitive with Gemini in several benchmarks”

RecommendsComment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Apple picks Google's Gemini to power Siri”

“the only SOTA-ish model that has fully open source code and data”

RecommendsComment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Relatively SoTA LLM Agents from Scratch?”

“Worked for the first message but got progressively more unstable.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“mine would perform very poorly when the conversation got past 1 turn”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“This type of model is as open as is physically possible, and represents a real improvement in user agency”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“if they're really being open about the whole pipeline, they have to include everything”

MixedComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“I really appreciate that you all are releasing true open source models complete with data, training code and weights.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“there is a broad practical application served here for developers who need to figure out a project on their own hardware”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“We are competitive with open weights models in general, just a couple points behind best Qwen.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“it admitted that it left out the fourth stomach because it was small, and claimed that the rumination wasn't "true" in some sense”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“There's a lot of companies using fine tuned Qwen 3 models that might want to switch to Olmo now that we have released a 32B base model.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“I'm wondering why it thinks that it was developed by OpenAI.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“this one is the closest to being competitive with closed models”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“Giraffes are not kosher because they do not chew their cud, even though they have split hooves.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“they also publish lot of data augmentation results including European language performance”

RecommendsComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“It might be an OpenWebUI bug but not so promising”

CriticizesComment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

“a huge achievement for a truly open source model, and a necessary check and balance on corporate control of AI”

RecommendsComment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.