Hugging Face CEO Clément Delang briefly commented on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s resignation on Thursday, calling it a “really sad day.” In September, Nvidia announced plans to acquire the open source platform for AI models for $12.9 billion, making it the second-largest acquisition in its history after acquiring chipmaker Groq in December 2025 for $20 billion in assets.
“This whole thing sucks and I wish nothing had happened. It’s a really sad day! But let’s be clear about one thing: We will continue to fight for open source AI now more than ever. This is too important to slow down now. Let’s go!” DeLang wrote on X.
This post is interesting because it suggests that Huang’s departure is potentially worrying open source advocates, and that he is trying to provide reassurance.
As CEO of Nvidia, Huang was known as a strong supporter of open source AI and open weight models. That could raise concerns about how companies without his leadership will approach this area going forward.
After Nvidia announced plans to acquire Hugging Face, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation into how the deal would affect competition in the AI market, Reuters reported in October. Nvidia has promised that the platform will maintain open support, which will give the company control over key distribution channels for its AI models.
The deal with Hugging Face is still expected to close in the first half of 2027. Requests for further comment on the status of the contract or whether Hugging Face has yet spoken with NVIDIA interim CEO Colette Kress were not returned.
Huang’s advocacy for open source and open weight AI has long gone beyond Hugging Face. In July, the CEO published an AI policy letter in his first post on social network X. The letter, signed by 25 companies including Microsoft, Meta, Hugging Face, IBM, and Palantir, urged the U.S. government not to overly restrict open-weight AI models. The report said models that “anyone can download, inspect, modify, and run on their own infrastructure” are an important part of the AI ecosystem, as they make AI “more accessible, adaptable, and widely available.”
Huang also wrote that open-weight models can expand access to the AI economy, increase competition, and provide customers with greater control because they are not locked into a single provider. “An open model strengthens safety and cybersecurity, accelerates innovation and adoption, and enables sovereignty,” his post on X states.
NVIDIA also announced in August that it had signed a $6 billion deal with coding startup Poolside to help build an open AI ecosystem in the U.S. and compete with Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Kim K3, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Last month, Nvidia expanded its Nemotron family of openweight models, adding a large 120 billion parameter model for agents used in the enterprise and two new lightweight Bolt models that run on PCs.
Earlier this year, Huang promoted open source AI in his January keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, saying the open source model “has truly revolutionized artificial intelligence.”
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