# Hugging Face
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{{Short description|American company}}
{{about|the company|the emoji|Emoji}}
{{Infobox company
| name = Hugging Face, Inc.
| logo = frameless|upright=1.2|class=skin-invert
| logo_alt =
| type = [Private](/source/Privately_held_company)
| industry = [Artificial intelligence](/source/Artificial_intelligence)
[Machine learning](/source/Machine_learning)
[Software development](/source/Software_development)
| founded = {{Start date and age|2016}}
| founder =
| hq_location_city = [Manhattan](/source/Manhattan), [New York City](/source/New_York_City)
| hq_location_country =
| area_served = Worldwide
| key_people = {{Unbulleted list|Clément Delangue (CEO)| Julien Chaumond (CTO)| Thomas Wolf (CSO)}}
| products = Models, datasets, spaces,
learn, inference, libraries
| owner =
| revenue = {{increase}} {{US$|15}}{{nbsp}}million
| revenue_year = 2022
| num_employees = 250[{{Cite web |last=Palazzolo |first=Stephanie |date=February 5, 2025 |title=Hugging Face Lays Off 4% of Staff |url=https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/hugging-face-lays-off-4-of-staff |website=[The Information](/source/The_Information_(website)) |url-access=subscription}}]
| num_employees_year = 2025
| parent =
| website = {{URL|https://huggingface.co/}}
}}
{{Contains special characters|emoticon}}
'''Hugging Face, Inc.''', is an American company based in [New York City](/source/List_of_tech_companies_in_the_New_York_metropolitan_area) that develops [computation](/source/computation) tools for building applications using [machine learning](/source/machine_learning). Its [transformers](/source/Transformer_(machine_learning_model)) [library](/source/Software_libraries) built for [natural language processing](/source/natural_language_processing) applications and its platform allow users to share machine learning models and [datasets](/source/Dataset_(machine_learning)) and showcase their work.
== History ==
=== Founding ===
The company was founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf in [New York City](/source/New_York_City), originally as a company that developed a [chatbot](/source/chatbot) app targeted at teenagers. The company was named after the {{unichar|1F917}} [emoji](/source/emoji).[{{Cite web |date=9 March 2017 |title=Hugging Face wants to become your artificial BFF |url=https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/hugging-face-wants-to-become-your-artificial-bff/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220925012620/https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/hugging-face-wants-to-become-your-artificial-bff/ |archive-date=2022-09-25 |access-date=2023-09-17 |website=[TechCrunch](/source/TechCrunch) |language=en-US|last=Dillet|first=Romain}}] After [open sourcing](/source/Open-source_software) the model behind the chatbot, the company [pivoted](/source/Lean_startup) to focus on being a platform for machine learning.
=== AI boom ===
On April 28, 2021, the company launched the BigScience Research Workshop in collaboration with several other research groups to release an open [large language model](/source/large_language_model).[{{cite web |last=Wiggers |first=Kyle |date=10 January 2022 |title=Inside BigScience, the quest to build a powerful open language model |url=https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/10/inside-bigscience-the-quest-to-build-a-powerful-open-language-model/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220701073233/https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/10/inside-bigscience-the-quest-to-build-a-powerful-open-language-model/ |archive-date=1 July 2022 |access-date=5 August 2022 |work=[VentureBeat](/source/VentureBeat)}}] In 2022, the workshop concluded with the announcement of [BLOOM](/source/BLOOM_(language_model)), a multilingual large language model with 176 billion parameters.[{{Cite web |title=BLOOM |url=https://bigscience.huggingface.co/blog/bloom |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221114122342/https://bigscience.huggingface.co/blog/bloom |archive-date=2022-11-14 |access-date=2022-08-20 |website=bigscience.huggingface.co |type=Blog}}][{{Cite web |last=Heikkllä |first=Melissa |date=12 July 2022 |title=Inside a radical new project to democratize AI |url=https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/12/1055817/inside-a-radical-new-project-to-democratize-ai/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204184214/https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/12/1055817/inside-a-radical-new-project-to-democratize-ai/ |archive-date=2022-12-04 |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=[MIT Technology Review](/source/MIT_Technology_Review) |language=en}}]
right|thumb|Clément Delangue in 2023
In February 2023, the company announced partnership with [Amazon Web Services](/source/Amazon_Web_Services) (AWS) which would allow Hugging Face's products to be available to AWS customers to use them as the building blocks for their custom applications. The company also said the next generation of BLOOM will be run on Trainium, a proprietary [machine learning chip](/source/Machine_learning_hardware) created by AWS.[{{cite news |last=Bass |first=Dina |date=2023-02-21 |title=Amazon's Cloud Unit Partners With Startup Hugging Face as AI Deals Heat Up |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/amazon-s-aws-joins-with-ai-startup-hugging-face-as-chatgpt-competition-heats-up |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230522030130/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/amazon-s-aws-joins-with-ai-startup-hugging-face-as-chatgpt-competition-heats-up |archive-date=2023-05-22 |access-date=2023-02-22 |work=[Bloomberg News](/source/Bloomberg_News)}}][{{cite news |last=Nellis |first=Stephen |date=2023-02-21 |title=Amazon Web Services pairs with Hugging Face to target AI developers |url=https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-web-services-pairs-with-hugging-face-target-ai-developers-2023-02-21/ |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230530091325/https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-web-services-pairs-with-hugging-face-target-ai-developers-2023-02-21/ |archive-date=2023-05-30 |access-date=2023-02-22 |work= |agency=Reuters}}][{{Cite web |last=Amazon Web Services |author-link=Amazon Web Services |date=2023-02-21 |title=AWS and Hugging Face collaborate to make generative AI more accessible and cost efficient |url=https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/aws-and-hugging-face-collaborate-to-make-generative-ai-more-accessible-and-cost-efficient/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230825202343/https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/aws-and-hugging-face-collaborate-to-make-generative-ai-more-accessible-and-cost-efficient/ |archive-date=2023-08-25 |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=AWS Machine Learning Blog |publisher=[Amazon](/source/Amazon_(company)) |language=en-US |type=Blog}}]
right|thumb|Thomas Wolf in 2024
In June 2024, the company announced, along with [Meta](/source/Meta_Platforms) and [Scaleway](/source/Scaleway), their launch of a new AI accelerator program for European startups. The initiative aimed to help startups integrate open foundation models into their products, accelerating the EU AI ecosystem. The program, based at STATION F in Paris, ran from September 2024 to February 2025. Selected startups received mentoring, and access to AI models and tools and Scaleway's computing power.[{{Cite web |last=Zacks Equity Research |date=2024-06-25 |title=META Collaboration Launches AI Accelerator for European Startups |url=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-collaboration-launches-ai-accelerator-151500146.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240711201409/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-collaboration-launches-ai-accelerator-151500146.html |archive-date=2024-07-11 |access-date=2024-07-11 |website=[Yahoo Finance](/source/Yahoo_Finance) |language=en-US}}]
On September 23, 2024, to further the [International Decade of Indigenous Languages](/source/International_Decade_of_Indigenous_Languages), Hugging Face teamed up with Meta and [UNESCO](/source/UNESCO) to launch a new online language translator.[{{Cite web |last= |date=2024-09-23 |title=NLLB: UNESCO Language Translator |url=https://huggingface.co/spaces/UNESCO/nllb |url-status=live |access-date=8 February 2026 |website=Spaces |publisher=Hugging Face|archive-url=https://archive.today/20260208232349/https://huggingface.co/spaces/UNESCO/nllb|archive-date=8 February 2026}}] It was built on Meta's [No Language Left Behind](/source/No_Language_Left_Behind) open-source AI model, enabling free text translation across 200 languages, including many low-resource languages.[{{Cite web |last= |date= |title=UNESCO Language Translator powered by Meta and Hugging Face Launching Event |url=https://www.unesco.org/en/event/unesco-language-translator-powered-meta-and-hugging-face-launching-event-0 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260208233423/https://www.unesco.org/en/event/unesco-language-translator-powered-meta-and-hugging-face-launching-event-0 |archive-date=8 February 2026 |access-date=8 February 2026 |publisher=[UNESCO](/source/UNESCO)}}]
In April 2025, Hugging Face announced that they acquired a humanoid robotics startup, Pollen Robotics, based in France and founded by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet in 2016.[{{Cite web |last=Wiggers |first=Kyle |date=2025-04-14 |title=Hugging Face buys a humanoid robotics startup |url=https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/14/hugging-face-buys-a-humanoid-robotics-startup/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250415015746/https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/14/hugging-face-buys-a-humanoid-robotics-startup/ |archive-date=15 April 2025 |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=[TechCrunch](/source/TechCrunch) |language=en-US}}][{{Cite web |last=Koetsier |first=John |date=14 April 2025 |title=Open Source Humanoid Robots That You Can 3D Print Yourself: Hugging Face Buys Pollen Robotics |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/04/14/open-source-humanoid-robots-hugging-face-buys-pollen-robotics/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250415020729/https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/04/14/open-source-humanoid-robots-hugging-face-buys-pollen-robotics/ |archive-date=15 April 2025 |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=[Forbes](/source/Forbes) |language=en}}] In an X tweet, Delangue shared his vision to "make Artificial Intelligence robotics Open Source".[{{Cite magazine |last=Knight |first=Will |date=14 April 2025 |title=An Open Source Pioneer Wants to Unleash Open Source AI Robots |url=https://www.wired.com/story/hugging-face-acquires-open-source-robot-startup/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250414130554/https://www.wired.com/story/hugging-face-acquires-open-source-robot-startup/ |archive-date=14 April 2025 |access-date=2025-04-15 |magazine=[Wired](/source/Wired_(magazine)) |language=en-US |issn=1059-1028}}]
=== Cyberattacks ===
In early 2026, hackers hijacked the Hugging Face platform to launch Android-targeted attacks involving "powerful malware" which could completely take over a compromised target.[{{Cite web |last=Fadilpašić |first=Sead |date=30 January 2026 |title=Hugging Face platform hijacked to send out Android malware - here's what we know so far |url=https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/hugging-face-platform-hijacked-to-send-out-android-malware-heres-what-we-know-so-far |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260130170834/https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/hugging-face-platform-hijacked-to-send-out-android-malware-heres-what-we-know-so-far |archive-date=30 January 2026 |access-date=8 February 2026 |website=[TechRadar Pro](/source/TechRadar_Pro)}}]
== See also ==
* [Kaggle](/source/Kaggle)
* [OpenAI](/source/OpenAI)
* [Station F](/source/Station_F)
* [TensorFlow Hub](/source/TensorFlow_Hub)
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
== External links ==
*{{Official website}}
{{Generative AI}}
{{Artificial intelligence (AI)}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hugging Face}}
Category:Machine learning
Category:Open-source artificial intelligence
Category:Privately held companies based in New York City
Category:American companies established in 2016
Category:2016 establishments in New York City
Category:Artificial intelligence industry in the United States
---
Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Hugging Face](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugging_Face) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugging_Face?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.