Open source AI matters more than ever, according to Hugging Face’s Clem Delangue
Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown in recent years into something like a GitHub for AI, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, which are now used by about half of the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story happen again and again: companies start with groundbreaking APIs, but as they scale, costs push them toward open source models.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Delangue about why the battle between open and closed sources matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he’s concerned about the possibility that a handful of big companies could eventually take control of everything.
Listen to the full episode to learn more about:
- How Chinese labs produce the majority of open models downloaded in the US, and why Delangue thinks this is a problem worth solving rather than a reason to distrust open source itself.
- How Hugging Face is choosing capital efficiency over the usual Silicon Valley fundraising playbook, including why the company turned down a major investment from Nvidia last year.
- Why he sees robotics as an even more urgent plea for open, transparent AI than chatbots or coding tools, given how much of your home and family life a robot will ultimately see.
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