2026-04-14 –, Merck Plenary (Spectrum) [1st Floor]
Chinese and American open-source LLMs are competing head-to-head — from DeepSeek and Qwen to Llama and Mistral. The model landscape is broader than ever, yet in Germany the debate still circles around waiting for the next breakthrough. Alexander Hendorf and Sebastian Raschka discuss what these models can and cannot do today, what biases to watch for, and which deployment strategies actually work in practice. The session reserves substantial time for questions and discussion with the audience.
Alexander Hendorf and Sebastian Raschka sit down for a fireside chat on the current state of open-source LLMs.
With Chinese models like DeepSeek and Qwen competing directly with Llama and Mistral, the choice of capable open-source models has never been wider — so why are so many teams still waiting for the next generation instead of building with what is already here?
Questions we want to discuss:
- What role do Chinese and American OSS models play in the current competitive landscape?
- Where do open-source models still fall short of proprietary ones, and where has the gap closed?
- What biases should practitioners be aware of and how to handle them?
- Are AI agents a fundamental shift or are we seeing diminishing returns?
- What deployment strategies actually work — especially for European teams that rely on talent and domain expertise rather than hyperscaler compute?
Half the session is reserved for audience questions.
Sebastian is an LLM Research Engineer with over a decade of experience in artificial intelligence. His work bridges academia and industry, including roles as a senior engineer at Lightning AI and a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He is also the author of Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch).
His expertise lies in LLM research and the development of high-performance AI systems, with a strong focus on practical, code-driven implementations.
Alexander C.S. Hendorf is an independent AI and open-source strategy advisor working with companies in regulated industries. With 20+ years of hands-on experience across 50+ technologies — from the Python ecosystem to vector databases — he bridges the gap between boardroom decisions and technical execution. Alexander is a Python Software Foundation Fellow, heads the Open Source Working Group of the KI Bundesverband, serves on the board of the Python Software Verband, and has delivered 100+ talks in 15+ countries.