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Clem Delangue

Co-founder and CEO, Hugging Face

Open-source AIAI platformsMachine learning toolsAI policy

Early career at Moodstocks

Clément Delangue, known as Clem, is a French entrepreneur[1]. According to his official bio, he began his career in product at Moodstocks, a machine learning startup for computer vision that Google acquired in 2016[2].

Founding Hugging Face

Delangue launched Hugging Face in Brooklyn in 2016 with Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf[1]. The three founders first built a chatbot app aimed at teenagers[1]. After they open-sourced the algorithm behind the app, the company pivoted to building a platform for creating, testing and deploying machine learning models[1].

Hugging Face's platform includes a GitHub-like hub for AI models, datasets and code, web apps for demonstrating AI applications, libraries for dataset processing and model evaluation, and an enterprise version of the hub[1]. In 2021 the company launched BigScience, a volunteer-led project to build an open-source language model comparable to OpenAI's GPT-3, which produced the multilingual model Bloom[1]. It also worked with ServiceNow on the free code-generation model StarCoder[1].

In August 2023 Hugging Face raised $235 million in a Series D round with participation from Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Salesforce and Sound Ventures, which valued the company at $4.5 billion[1]. At the time Delangue told TechCrunch that AI was the new way of building all software, and that Hugging Face intended to be the open platform for that shift[1].

Testimony to the US Congress

On 22 June 2023 Delangue testified before the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at a hearing titled Artificial Intelligence: Advancing Innovation Towards the National Interest[3][4]. The other witnesses included Jason Matheny of the RAND Corporation and Rumman Chowdhury[3].

In his written testimony he described Hugging Face's mission as democratizing good machine learning, mainly through open source and open science[4]. He argued that making models, training datasets and research more open helps researchers understand AI systems, audit them and reduce risks[4]. He also wrote that fully closed systems can be inaccessible to researchers and auditors, while fully open systems can attract malicious actors, and that all systems need risk mitigation[4]. He described Hugging Face's approach to ethical openness as a mix of documentation, technical safeguards such as gated access, and community moderation[4].

Robotics and the Nvidia acquisition

Under Delangue, Hugging Face has expanded into robotics[5][6]. In April 2025 it acquired Pollen Robotics, a French startup founded in 2016 that builds humanoid robots for the home, after the two companies had worked together on LeRobot, an open-source robot trained for household chores[5]. The Next Web reported in 2026 that the company had moved into hardware with the Reachy Mini robot[6].

In September 2026 Nvidia confirmed that it was buying Hugging Face for $12.93 billion[6]. The Next Web reported that at the time Hugging Face had about 18 million developers and 200,000 companies using the platform, which hosted three million models[6]. Delangue described the sale as a decision about resources, saying the platform needed more compute, support, collaboration and visibility[6]. Under the deal, Delangue and the rest of the founding team are staying on, and Hugging Face is keeping its brand and leadership[6]. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Hugging Face would remain an open platform for the whole AI ecosystem[6]. The Next Web noted that the deal required regulatory clearance in several jurisdictions and that no closing date had been given[6].

Known for

Sources

  1. TechCrunch: Hugging Face raises $235M from investors, including Salesforce and Nvidia, August 2023 — checked 6 Nov 2026
  2. Qualcomm: Clement Delangue speaker bio (PDF) — checked 6 Nov 2026
  3. US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: hearing page, June 2023 — checked 6 Nov 2026
  4. Hugging Face: Written Testimony of Clement Delangue, June 2023 (PDF) — checked 6 Nov 2026
  5. TechCrunch: Hugging Face buys a humanoid robotics startup, April 2025 — checked 6 Nov 2026
  6. The Next Web: Nvidia confirms it is buying Hugging Face for $12.93bn, September 2026 — checked 6 Nov 2026
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