Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue commented on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s departure on Thursday, “This whole thing sucks, and I wish none of it had happened. It’s a really sad day! But I want to make one thing clear: we’ll keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever. This is too important to slow down now. Let’s go!,” Delangue wrote on X.
In September it was announced that Nvidia is set to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion in a big bet on open source AI models. Huang had written in a blog post that with the deal, Hugging Face will “remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem.” “Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide,” Huang wrote.
The Department of Justice had begun inquiries about how the deal would impact competition in the AI market, Reuters reported in October. The Hugging Face deal is still scheduled to close in the first half of 2027.
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Huang has long been an advocate of open-source and open weight AI models. In CEO, published an AI policy letter as his first-ever post on the social network X. The letter, which was signed by 25 companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Hugging Face, IBM, Palantir, and others, urged the U.S. government not to over-restrict open-weight AI models. It said models that “anyone can download, inspect, modify, and run on their own infrastructure” are an important part of the AI ecosystem because they make AI “more accessible, adaptable, and widely available.”
Huang also wrote that open-weight models expand access to the AI economy, strengthen competition, and give customers greater control, as they know they won’t become locked into a single provider. “Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty,” his post on X stated.
Huang stepped down from his position following reports of extramarital affairs, with Nvidia launching an investigation into whether he was a target of a foreign intelligence operation. While Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman linked to the Nvidia CEO was accused of acting as an agent of the Chinese government, U.S. intelligence agencies haven’t yet established such a connection.
Earlier this year, Huang promoted open source AI during his January keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, noting that open source models have “really revolutionized artificial intelligence.”