---
title: "What is an open-weight model?"
description: "An open-weight model is an AI model whose trained weights are published for download. You can run it on your own hardware, fine-tune it and, depending on its license, use it commercially. It is not always fully open source: the training data and code are often not released."
url: https://exolabs.net/faq/what-is-an-open-weight-model/
updated: 2026-10-26
---

# What is an open-weight model?

An open-weight model is an AI model whose trained weights are published for download. You can run it on your own hardware, fine-tune it and, depending on its license, use it commercially. It is not always fully open source: the training data and code are often not released.

Licenses vary. Some use permissive licenses such as Apache 2.0 or MIT. Others add limits on use or on the size of company that can use them for free. Read the license on the model card before you deploy.

Weights are usually downloaded from Hugging Face. Many models are also published in pre-quantized versions that use less memory, for example by the mlx-community organization for Apple silicon.

**Where exo fits:** exo loads open-weight models from Hugging Face, including custom ones, and can run them across one or many devices.

Sources:
- [Hugging Face model hub](https://huggingface.co/models)
- [exo on GitHub (README)](https://github.com/exo-explore/exo)

Page: https://exolabs.net/faq/what-is-an-open-weight-model/ · Updated 2026-10-26 · Deployments: https://exolabs.net/#business (sales@exolabs.net)