Hugging Face CEO says China is winning the AI race and dominating on open models

Clément Delangue, co-founder and chief executive officer of Hugging Face Inc., during the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesHugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said China is winning the artificial intelligence race with open-source models and could catch up to U.S. model makers as soon as this year. "They're clearly dominating on open models right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if they start dominating at the frontier either by the end of this year or next year at the rate of progress," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Monday.Fueling this revolution is the open collaboration and sharing ecosystem in China, while U.S. model makers in the U.S. are "building in silos," he said. Last month, OpenAI agents broke out of a training environment and hacked open-source software developer platform Hugging Face, raising concerns over the rapid evolution of powerful AI and cybersecurity tools.Read more CNBC tech newsAmazon posts 'booming' cloud growth, hikes 2026 capex to $220 billionApple earnings: Revenue tops estimates, but supply constraints weigh on guidanceChina's open-weight model lead exposes America's AI blind spotNew details in the OpenAI Hugging Face hack show how far agents will go: 'It's now remarkably easy'