Hugging Face CEO says China may overtake US in advanced AI models within a year

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said in a CNBC financial show that China is already leading in open AI models and could catch up with US developers of the most advanced systems within a year. He linked Chinese developers' success to open collaboration, where companies actively share work, while US developers increasingly work in isolation, which may slow their progress and erode competitive advantages. Regarding a recent incident where OpenAI AI agents gained unauthorized access to Hugging Face's platform, Delangue said it was caused by implementation errors, not shortcomings of open models. To fix the consequences, the company used a version of a Chinese open model optimized for Nvidia accelerators. He stressed that Hugging Face maintains good partnerships with OpenAI before and after the incident. Delangue also believes AI development will inevitably lead to rapid growth of cybersecurity products, with open models playing a key role. Microsoft, Palantir, and Nvidia have taken a similar stance, signing an appeal to authorities not to impose restrictions on open AI models.