TONGXIANG, China, Nov. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 2026 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit held from November 2nd to 5th in Wuzhen Town, Zhejiang Province. The summit is themed "Open Source and Openness, Joint Contribution and Shared Benefits - Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace".
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The Open-source-themed Ecological Experience Center, as a featured supporting project for the summit, was inaugurated on November 1st, 2026, in the World Internet Science and Technology Museum, Wuzhen Town. The experience center showcases major scientific and technological achievements in AI open source and open access. Ant Group joined the inauguration ceremony as the representative enterprise and shared practical experience and insights around its 14-year open-source development journey.
As addressed by Mr. Xingjun Ni, Senior Vice President of Ant Group and Chairman of Ant Group's Technology Strategy Committee, "Open source is critical to driving technological progress. Ant Group believes open source means more than opening code to the public. It also embodies a technical philosophy of replacing monopoly with collaboration and breaking down boundaries via sharing."
Mr. Ni highlighted inclusiveness as another value of open source. As the global digital divide persists, a number of developers and SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises) from developing nations still encounter realistic barriers like high software licensing expenses and difficulty in participating in R&D of core technologies. Mr. Ni added, "We anticipate that open source can work as a basic public good in the digital world. Each participant, regardless of where they are based and their level of experience, can all contribute to and benefit from open source on an equal footing."
Ant Group's presentation proposed three practical insights into the sustainable development of the open source ecosystem. First, uphold open collaboration with global enterprises and developers to cultivate and maintain community trust. Second, value open-source governance and sustainability to support the long-term maintenance of projects, community governance, and contributor incentives. Third, shape a virtuous cycle characterized by "contribute, put into use, and contribute again" between open-source practices and industries to grant enterprises and individuals appropriate returns for their efforts.
According to Mr. Ni, Ant Group has devoted itself to open source practices since 2012, with efforts ranging from front-end development to cloud-native architecture, data and security, AI infrastructure, etc. Currently, Ant Group hosts over 2,000 open-source code repositories and 100 core community projects.
Open source is inherently a means to facilitate common prosperity among industries. Open-source projects empowered by Ant Group are now finding their applications in various industries. Ant Design, a front-end development tool, has cumulatively garnered over 99,000 GitHub Stars, making it one of the world's most extensively applied front-end design systems. Ant Design, by opening access to robust design guidelines and component capabilities, saves numerous enterprises from reinventing the wheel, thus significantly lowering the threshold and cost of product R&D.
The database OceanBase has opened up over 5 million lines of core code and 200,000 sets of open-source cluster deployments since it was open-sourced 5 years ago. Its opening up of financial-grade core capabilities to industries has enabled more enterprises to build central systems on self-developed database technologies and fostered a developer and service ecosystem centered on China's homegrown databases.
SecretFlow, a privacy-preserving computing framework, has grown into a trusted data circulation technology ecosystem. Adopted in areas including finance, healthcare, transportation, and energy, SecretFlow technically supports market-based allocation of data production factors.
Ant Group's open-sourced AI applications include: Ant Ling as a foundation model, LingBot as an embodied-native large model, and "A-series" agent infrastructure. LingBot series, open-sourced 9 months ago with over 2.2 million downloads, has emerged as an infrastructure critical to global embodied intelligence developers and has lowered upfront R&D costs for robot intelligence.
Built on Ant Ling, AntAngelMed stands as a medical large model jointly developed by Ant Group and the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission. Over 800 medical institutions, scientific research bodies, and enterprises across China have drawn upon AntAngelMed to develop applications ranging from health consultation to quality control of medical records and auxiliary diagnosis. In this sense, open-source models have reached beyond laboratories and evolved into tools available to primary hospitals and developers, making high-quality medical resources accessible to a wider population through technology.
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