Hugging Face CEO calls Jensen Huang’s Nvidia exit ‘sad’, vows to keep fighting for AI

He’s no longer Nvidia’s CEO, so does Jensen Huang still have to face Congress on November 18?

Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue expressed dismay following the departure of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, moving quickly to reassure the open-source artificial intelligence community that his company’s mission remains unchanged ahead of its pending multibillion-dollar acquisition by the chipmaker.

For those unaware, Hugging Face is the world's biggest repository for AI models.In a post on the social platform X, formerly Twitter, Delangue called the leadership change at Nvidia a “really sad day” while vowing to maintain momentum for open-source development. He wrote, “This whole thing sucks, and I wish none of it had happened. It’s a really sad day! But I want to make one thing clear: we’ll keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever. This is too important to slow down now. Let’s go!”Delangue’s remarks are seen as the worry among open-source advocates regarding Nvidia’s future commitment to the ecosystem without Huang at the helm.

In September, Nvidia announced plans to acquire Hugging Face -- a central hub for open-source AI models -- for $12.9 billion. The transaction represents the second-largest acquisition in Nvidia’s history, trailing only its $20 billion purchase of chipmaker Groq’s assets in December 2025.The acquisition, which remains scheduled to close in the first half of 2027, has already drawn regulatory scrutiny. In October, Reuters reported that the U.S.

Department of Justice had begun inquiring into how the merger might affect competition in the AI sector. Although Nvidia pledged to maintain Hugging Face’s open support, critics and regulators have noted that the deal would give the hardware giant control over a primary distribution channel for AI models.Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia had positioned itself as a vocal champion of open-source and open-weight models—systems whose underlying parameters are publicly accessible.

During his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January this year, Huang remarked that open-source models had “really revolutionized artificial intelligence.”In July, Huang used his first-ever post on X to publish an AI policy letter signed by 25 technology companies, including Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Palantir, and Hugging Face. The letter urged the U.S. government to avoid over-regulating open-weight models, arguing that software anyone can “download, inspect, modify, and run on their own infrastructure” prevents vendor lock-in and makes AI more accessible.

Huang wrote, "For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter. AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country. Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models."