When Code Is No Longer Scarce: Capital, Open Source & SourceDance

As AI makes code generation increasingly abundant and inexpensive, what remains truly scarce in open source? This talk reexamines the value of open source in the AI era from the perspective of capital. In 2026, funding is more abundant, yet increasingly concentrated, while the defensibility of open source projects is shifting from distribution efficiency toward trusted adoption, maintainer resilience, and community governance. Drawing on SourceDance—an AI-enabled open source internship initiative—the talk explores how lower barriers to participation can be translated into a stronger pipeline of high-quality contributors. It also offers a framework for investors, entrepreneurs, and maintainers to assess the long-term value of an open source project.

Speakers:

Lucy Chen: Singapore VC, EIR

Lucy Chen is an EIR at one of VC Capital (Singapore, $2B+ AUM), focused on AI infrastructure deal sourcing through open-source signals. She created the OSS Investment Scorecard — the first open-source VC evaluation framework for AI projects — which reached 100K+ reads in its first week with contributions from 6+ USD-denominated funds. She advises SourceDance.AI on project selection, connecting open-source community health metrics with venture capital decision-making in the global AI ecosystem.