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Clément Delangue

THE 🤗 MODEL BAZAAR

Generated editorial portrait of Clément Delangue in the unified mugshot-v2 dossier style.

FILE UPDATED Oct 8, 2026

WHY THEY MATTER

Co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform that turned a teen chatbot into the 'GitHub of machine learning' — and the industry's most stubborn evangelist for open AI.

THE RAP SHEET

ZIMBO'S READ ON Clément Delangue

Satirical cartoon: Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, in a vendor apron, holds a little robot aloft like a prize tomato behind a market stall heaped with robot models; a customer examines one. Stall sign reads MODELS.

THE MODEL BAZAAR.

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THE FRENCHMAN WHO GAVE AWAY THE AI

Co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform that turned a teen chatbot into the 'GitHub of machine learning' — and the industry's most stubborn evangelist for open AI.

  1. 2016

    TEEN CHATBOT BORN: THREE FRENCH GEEKS LAUNCH HUGGING FACE

    Clément Delangue co-founds Hugging Face in New York City with Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf. It starts as a chatbot app for teenagers, named after the 🤗 emoji.

    SOURCES: Wikipediareported

  2. 2018

    ONE WEEK AFTER GOOGLE'S BERT, HE FREES THE CODE

    Hugging Face ships an open-source PyTorch implementation of Google's breakthrough BERT model within a week of its release. The move makes the Transformers library the backbone of open-source NLP and seals the company's pivot.

    SOURCES: Entrepreneur News Networkreported

  3. May 2022

    $100M JACKPOT: CHATBOT FLIP HITS $2 BILLION

    Hugging Face closes a $100M Series C led by Lux Capital at a $2 billion valuation, with Sequoia and Coatue joining for the first time. The teen-chatbot footnote becomes the self-styled 'GitHub of machine learning.'

    SOURCES: TechCrunchreported

  4. Feb 21, 2023

    AMAZON KNOCKS: AWS INKS DEAL WITH OPEN-SOURCE DARLING

    AWS partners with Hugging Face to run open-source AI on Amazon's cloud, with the next BLOOM model slated for Amazon's Trainium chips. Delangue tells Reuters the deal is non-exclusive: significant engineering goes to shared products.

    SOURCES: Reutersreported

  5. Jun 22, 2023

    CONGRESS CALLS: 'OPEN SOURCE IS AMERICAN'

    Delangue testifies before the full House Science Committee that open science and open-source AI are 'extremely aligned with the American values and interests.' He warns the US might not lead in AI without open-source PyTorch, TensorFlow and transformers.

    SOURCES: VentureBeatreported

  6. Aug 24, 2023

    $235M MEGAROUND: TECH GIANTS ALL BUY IN

    Hugging Face raises a $235M Series D at a $4.5 billion valuation, led by Salesforce Ventures with Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM and Sound Ventures aboard. The valuation doubles in just over a year.

    SOURCES: Tech Startupsreported

  7. Aug 2026

    NVIDIA'S $12.9B SWOON: GIANT REPORTEDLY AGREES TO BUY HUGGING FACE

    Nvidia reportedly agrees to acquire Hugging Face for about $12.9B, per The Information, with CNBC and Bloomberg confirming talks — it would be Nvidia's largest acquisition ever. Nvidia was already on the cap table from the 2023 round.

    SOURCES: Value Add Pulsereported

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