The reason OpenAI bought Rockset is to enhance their retrieval infrastructure, and move closer to the implementation side of Generative AI.

With more models being open-source, and the focus small language modes which many are open-sourced, it seems like the market value is shifting from Zone 4 to Zone 5.

Only a few months ago, it seemed like OpenAI has captured the LLM market and no-one will ever be able to compete.

Then Meta AI open-sourced numerous very capable models.

Followed by stellar work from Microsoft on imbuing Small Language Models (SLMs) with enhanced reasoning capabilities, and by open-sourcing models.

Organisations moved their focus from gradient approaches (fine-tuning) to adapt models to their environment, to non-gradient approaches, like RAG and prompt engineering techniques.

These non-gradient frameworks demand vector technology, data centric tooling and RAG frameworks.

LLMs are becoming a mere utility and innovation is taking place in building applications which are powered by LLMs under the hood.

At last the market is moving to toward a Data centric approach. This acquisition also brings OpenAI closer to the developer community with Rockset’s integration with LangChian & LlamaIndex.