Hugging Face CEO: Companies are done renting AI - shifting to owning open source models

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Fresh take from Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue in the latest TechCrunch Equity podcast (July 10, 2026). He says companies are increasingly walking away from just renting frontier model APIs and moving toward owning their AI through open source. Key points: • Most enterprises start on closed frontier APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) • As usage scales, costs become unsustainable. • The #1 feedback he’s hearing right now from companies and customers: They want ownership , data contro