Thomas Wolf

Cofounder and Chief Scientist, Hugging Face

Search every verified Thomas Wolf interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, appeared at MACHINA 2026 in a fireside chat with OpenAI's Laura Modiano, where he discussed the intersection of foundation models and robotics. Wolf expressed skepticism about humanoid robots, describing them as "slightly scary" and stating a preference for "weird form factors" like rolling robots. He noted that robotics is "not yet a game of I need the largest data center" and that constraints like latency allow for the use of smaller, open-source models. Wolf also emphasized his excitement about the robotics community, particularly in Europe, and said he values seeing "people build in public." In a separate interview on the podcast "Due Diligence," Wolf discussed his background, including his PhD in physics and subsequent legal studies, explaining that he wanted to "understand how the world work" through both scientific and societal rules. He reflected on Hugging Face's pivot from a game company to an open-source AI platform, describing how a weekend project around Google's BERT model became an early signal of the company's potential. Wolf encouraged others to "take your own path" and noted that not following the "usual playbook of Silicon Valley" was a strength for Hugging Face.