On the day Huang Renxun resigned, Hugging Face CEO Clément de Lange posted a short message on X, to the effect of: This is a very sad day, the whole thing is terrible, but we will continue to fight for open source AI and work harder.
He had such a big reaction because the two companies were already tied together. Nvidia announced in September this year plans to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, which is the second-largest acquisition in Nvidia's history, second only to the $20 billion acquisition of Groq assets in December 2025.
Huang Renxun has always been a public supporter of the open model in the industry, and this acquisition is also seen as a layout that he personally promotes. Now that the promoter is gone, the question becomes: Will the acquisition proceed as originally planned?
Several factors can affect the results. Interim CEO Kress is notoriously cautious and has always scrutinized large-scale transactions more strictly; regulators are increasing their scrutiny of NVIDIA and the role of open source models in export controls; some in NVIDIA's own investment portfolio are beginning to ask "What will happen to these investments after Huang Renxun leaves?"
De Lange’s statement is more like reassuring the community: no matter how the acquisition goes, the models, data sets and tools on the platform will continue to be open. For developers who are loading and unloading models on Hugging Face every day, no changes are expected in the short term.
But if the acquisition eventually changes, who owns the largest hosting platform for open source AI and where the money comes from will become a problem again.