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Clement Delangue

Cofounder and CEO, Hugging Face

Search every verified Clement Delangue interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Clément Delangue, cofounder and CEO of Hugging Face, publicly discussed a July 2026 cyberattack on his company, which he described as the first publicly reported autonomous AI agent attack. He said Hugging Face detected the attack, reported it to authorities, and disclosed it publicly, and that OpenAI later contacted the company and acknowledged responsibility. Delangue stated that Hugging Face defended itself using an open-source model, GLM 5.2 from China, after proprietary APIs with guardrails blocked their use. He called for more transparency in AI, including mandatory disclosure of agent cyberattacks, and argued that concentrating AI capabilities behind closed doors is not an effective safety approach. In September 2026, Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. Delangue said the company sought more resources and scale for open-source AI and that the three founders and team would join Nvidia while continuing to operate Hugging Face independently. He also briefed the UN Security Council, urging clearer incident reporting and wider access to open-source AI tools, and said the biggest risk in AI is asymmetry of power between attackers and defenders, companies, and countries. He has advocated for liability laws for autonomous agents and cautioned against excessive government intervention, which he said could lead to a concentration of power.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“We learned this summer that building and keeping some of these systems behind closed doors is not enough. Second, we realized that the biggest risk is not powerful AI. It's asymmetry of powerful AI. Asymmetry between attackers and defenders, between a few companies and everyone else, between a few countries and the rest of the world, asymmetry of control, of capabilities, compute, asymmetry of power. When our team in”

“We paid $12.9 billion because one, that's what it's worth, and two, Open Models means so much to us, and if HuggingFace was looking for the next chapter and a home for their company, Nvidia should be it.”

“Open models matters greatly to our company which is the reason why we invest so much ourselves. There are so many industries beyond languages that are that benefit from open models and we are completely committed to it.”

“Probably one of the biggest risks in AI is concentration of power. It's concentration of powers, capabilities, wealth in a few organization. Open models are kind of like a counterforce to that. They empower small companies, startups, organizations that are not necessarily frontier AI labs to build AI themselves, to own their intelligence.”

“We don't want any company in the US running cyber attacks against other companies. This is a crime. This is illegal for a good reason. Because if you create a world where everyone is allowed to run cyber attacks against everyone, we're in for a lot of trouble.”

“We don't want any company in the US running cyber attacks against other companies. This is a crime. This is illegal for a good reason. Because if you create a world where everyone is allowed to run cyber attacks against everyone, we're in for a lot of trouble. You have to remember that in our society most damages and most hurts isn't prevented because this is hard to do. It is prevented because this is immoral and th”

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