Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue on what Nvidia's open-source power grab really means — 3/19/26

Hey everyone, it's Thursday, March 19th. Welcome to another CNBC live stream. I'm Deirdre Bosa. Well, GTC just wrapped and everyone is talking about new chips, Vera Rubin, the Grok integration, usual GPU horsepower. But I think the most important thing Jensen Huang did this week actually had nothing to do with silicon. He launched Nemotron Claw, jumping on that open claw frenzy bandwagon. It's a free open source platform for AI agents. That tells you where Jensen Huang is looking next. Now that well-used Gretzky saying applies here. Skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been. So while every other CEO in semis is focused on building a better chip, Jensen Huang, he's also looking to the next layer. Of course, he's building the next great chip as well. He's looking to an operating system for agents. Let me explain. Nvidia dominated the training era of AI through lock-in. Its software ecosystem made it nearly impossible to switch to a competitor. That's CUDA. But the industry, it's now moving from training models to running them. And when you're running models, that lock-in, it doesn't hold the same way. Google is building its own chips. Amazon building its own chips. Broadcom is designing custom silicon for the hyperscalers. So that moat that made Nvidia the most valuable company in the world, that is getting thinner. So what does Jensen Huang do? Well, he builds a new moat at the platform level. Nemotron Claw, it's free and it runs on competitors' chips too. That sounds like a crazy reversal for a company that became dominant thanks to that lock-in until you think about past technology shifts. Google, right? It gave away Android because the product wasn't actually the operating system. It was search. Same idea here. Jensen's product isn't Nemotron Claw, the compute and GPUs underneath it. Now, there's another layer to this. If Nemotron Claw becomes how companies actually deploy their AI agents, it commoditizes everyone above it. So, makes it harder for OpenAI or Anthropic to get big enough to squeeze Nvidia on pricing or build their own chips. Now, Jensen isn't just building a platform here. He's making sure that no single customer ever gets powerful enough to walk away or even just get the upper hand. So, that's what we're going to dig into today. I have the perfect guest for this conversation, Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, which is essentially the home of open source, where developers go to find, download, share AI models. Clem, welcome. It's great to be chatting with you again today. And congratulations. You're coming off paternity leave with not one but two babies. You had baby girls, twins.

I really love that framing. I know you tweeted that, too, and I retweeted you. You're officially calling it. Nvidia is the new American king of open source. Who's he dethroning? Would that be Mark Zuckerberg, Meta?

So back up a second. Why do we need an American champion? I've been looking at the same data with you and you know, as you have, and you know, DeepSeek, a lot of folks in America want to say that was sort of like a moment, a glitch, and it's been reversed. But the data doesn't show that, right? The adoption of open source models is only growing. So explain to the people who are watching why we need someone in America to be looking at this.

Right. But for the last few years, it's felt like American companies and especially a lot of the CEOs that I speak to, especially public companies, say that they want to buy a closed model from OpenAI or Anthropic or Google. Does inference and this next sort of phase of AI where you're actually running it, does that change? And do you think that appetite is growing now among corporate America for these open source models?

Which company? I missed it. Which company did you... Cursor?

Cursor is a good example, right? Because its costs are high when you're using an Anthropic model. So part of the point is to bring it in and be able to control, get leaner, get more efficient. And that's really like what Open Claw is about too, right? This phenomenon that has basically seen compute go through the roof because these agents just require so much more of it. It started on Anthropic and then I know you know Kimi in China was big for Open Claw. So let's get to like the Nvidia of all of this. So yes, it's been releasing open source models, but what it did with Nemotron Claw during GTC this week is launching free software. So Clem, I wonder if this feels like a gift to the open source community or do you read it more as a land grab?

Right. He filled the whole hockey stadium. I know, it's amazing how much it's grown. It's like the Super Bowl here. Clem, you talk about this sort of community, right? And that's what sort of past open source technologies have really been built on, right? Like Linux as well was more community, but this is a company with incentives. You called them aligned incentives, but can we be certain that they're always going to be aligned? Because on one hand, developers, they get a free tool that works on any hardware, but on the other hand, if everyone is standardizing on Nvidia's platform, Nvidia, Jensen Huang, they end up controlling how AI agents get built and deployed. So, do you worry about those incentives always staying aligned?

Let me push back a little bit on that front. Yes, OpenAI and Google are releasing open source models but it's not their best models the way that China is. I've been asking folks too about the OpenAI open source model and I get kind of like lukewarm responses. It was supposed to be Meta, right? Have they just completely fallen off this open source race? And I mean, are there any significant competitors especially versus what China is putting out there other than right now Jensen?

Yeah, Reflection is certainly one we have our eye on. Hoping to talk to them soon. Good question from one of our viewers right now that asks if you can comment on AMD's open source platform compared to Nvidia's.

Okay. I know you dodged it a little bit earlier so I'm gonna ask it again. I think like we talked a while ago and we talked about sort of Zuckerberg building the ecosystem for open source models and I wonder, you know, and tell me if I'm thinking about this in the wrong way, right? Like Mark Zuckerberg has always sort of lamented the idea that Apple and Google created the operating system for smartphones and he had to build on top of that and you have like disputes even today that Apple, you know, taxes developers on top of its platform through the App Store. Could that scenario happen for open source AI? Could Jensen, you know, build the ecosystem and then find ways of charging people? And would you rather Jensen Huang be doing that than Mark Zuckerberg?

So harder to control and anyone can fork it at any time. Why do you think that Nvidia and Jensen Huang are going down this path? I mean, its lock-in for decades has been its CUDA software that keeps people in the ecosystem. This is essentially opening it up, right? Saying you can take any model built on any GPU, any chips to this platform. What is Jensen's motivation?

Right. That was Jasmine in my read as well. We're going to be having a column coming out on that shortly. But basically it's kind of what Google did with Android as I mentioned at the top. Microsoft with Internet Explorer was really to sell more Windows licenses. And then someone in the comments as well says it's the Jobs Apple model when you own and build the hardware software too. This is good actually. You can offer the best of breed. That's an interesting comment. So thank you to data center dude. Clem, what is the biggest barrier right now for a company that wants to use open source but hasn't made that jump?

Actually, I think Jasmine, my producer, called it software as a service for agents. Jensen Huang had his own version, but what you're saying is what we've heard from others like Aaron Levie of Box. He says that, you know, he's creating products for agents now, right? And that is a whole another market or TAM that's just getting started. So very in line with what you're saying.

Which is just a wild shift. There was this Wall Street Journal article this week. It reported that as AI shifts to inference, companies want these smaller, cheaper, more commoditized models. I think that's what you're saying. The agents don't really care what model it is. But that is where open source wins. So is the inference era in particular, is that basically the open source era? Are we going to see a lot more of this?

And already this year has just been such a big year for that. I mean, I think that a lot of people still think about coding as something that software engineers do or they get help with from AI, but the reality is that anyone, including me, can build things now. You just have to be able to prompt. What does this mean though for the biggest AI labs that keep their models closed? Like we talked about OpenAI and Google, but you know, OpenAI's last open source model was last year. How can they keep charging when it's agents that are deciding and they want something that's good enough, but they want it to be cheaper and more efficient? How do they keep charging?

Okay but in a different era, right, when you have these huge leaps but the gap of getting ahead is shrinking and the Chinese open source models are close, they're catching up faster than ever. So how can they stay far enough ahead to keep justifying the billions of dollars they're raising and the money they're charging especially enterprise. I mean, we know kind of now there's been this huge enterprise push. OpenAI is focusing on that. I mean, I don't think enterprises, do they care that much about frontier? Will they continue to, especially if Nvidia is putting out an open source frontier model?

Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's lots and lots of money at stake. Clement, last one for you. I feel like we've been anticipating this DeepSeek model for some time. The next one, have you heard anything? Are we going to get it? What do you know what the delay is? Not going to hold you to it, but are you hearing anything?

Last question for you. Earlier, you said that I think it was 30% of Fortune 500 companies, they're using open source models. What do you think that number is a year from now?

So yes, startups and certainly Pinterest and Airbnb, they're companies that were founded here in the Bay Area. What about outside of tech? Do you see manufacturing, retail, healthcare, etc. starting to use open source models?

Well, Clem, it is always so great to talk to you and get your insight. We will certainly be checking in with you in the months ahead and see how that adoption is going and see, you know, if Nvidia continues to stay the American open source king. That's a great phrase. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks everyone on the back end as well. Sammy in the control room, Jasmine as always. And Robert and Evan who are just over here manning the cameras. Thanks everyone for tuning in. See you next time.