Clément Delangue

Co-Founder & CEO, Hugging Face · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Clément Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hugging Face, an AI community building platform. He has raised over $160 million for the company from investors including Sequoia, Coatue, Addition, and Lux Capital.

23statements → 11claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.38/5average certainty → 2.62/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 6said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 7 assertions · 4 opinions · 5 insights · 2 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Clément argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Delangue: The ROI on Training Larger AI Models Is Declining
“We starting to realize that more compute for models is not necessarily The right thing, or at least that it's not enough and the return on investment on training larger and larger models is starting to go down.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 32:07 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
83% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.7

redirected or did not address 5 of 35 assessed questions (14%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

213 words/min while actually speaking · 27.2 um and uh per 1k words · 33.3 false starts per 1k · 27.9% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: French). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 6,756 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Clément Delangue said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Delangue: No Single AI Model Will Dominate Because AI Resembles Codebases
“In the simplistic terms, the model or like AI is like a code base, right? It's a bit different, but at the end of the day, it's a code base, right? And so it's kind of silly to say, oh, this code base is better than this code base, or there's going to be one c…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 14:03 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Delangue: Using AI APIs Is Like Building Websites on Squarespace
“The analogy that I sometimes like is that on the early days of the web, you could use kind of like something that would Create a website for you, right? You could use the equivalent of a Squarespace or for weeks, and that would make you feel good, right? Becau…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 16:18 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Delangue: AI Is Far From Becoming Autonomous or Humanity-Destroying
“I believe at the same time, we are very far from a world where AI is autonomous. And has conscience and is taking over the world and destroying humanity. I think this is more fear that is very sci-fi driven that we're very far from.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 33:56 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Delangue: 95% of a VC's Value Is Financial Capitalization and Support
“Investors are first and foremost investors, right? Meaning that their main value add is to deal around To help you on financial matters. So for example, when SVB go down, right? And then to help you to always capitalize the company the right way. So they're, i…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 45:53 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Delangue: VCs Should Not Act Like Operators or CEOs
“They sometimes act almost as CEO or, like, operators for companies. Which in, in my opinion is, is not really their job. And worse than that, I feel like sometimes entrepreneurs are building companies for investors and investors are behaving like entrepreneurs…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 46:56 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clément Delangue: Deep AI Startups Can Execute 100x Better Than Incumbents
“I think if you were thinking about AI as AI APIs, I agree. If you're thinking of AI as a more radical paradigm switch to build technology, right? And if you think about an AI startup as a company that is actually training models, creating new architectures, op…”
Clément Delangue Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 17:36 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Opinion
Delangue: Startups training their own models build better products than wrappers
“If you look at models closer to Runway ML or Stability AI or like PhotoRoom in Paris, you see these AI native startups that are actually building, training their own models. And how they can, in my opinion, build much better things than the ones that just use …”
Clément Delangue Jun 2, 2023 ▶ 10:04 20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
What-if
Delangue: Open Source Accelerated AI Progress by 30 to 50 Years
“Without open science, without open source, without Google sharing their attention is all you need paper, sharing their birth paper the latent diffusion paper. Maybe we would be 3040, 50 years away from where we are today.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 7:43 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Delangue: Incumbents Struggle With AI Due to Long-Term Research Requirements
“Because it's a completely different way to build technology, right? It's a way where you have to have scientists, for example, working for six months on a new architecture, on a new model before releasing it. So it's a different paradigm of how you build softw…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 28:41 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Delangue: The ROI on Training Larger AI Models Is Declining
“We starting to realize that more compute for models is not necessarily The right thing, or at least that it's not enough and the return on investment on training larger and larger models is starting to go down.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 32:07 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Delangue: Hugging Face Refuses to Speak With External VCs Between Rounds
“One of these rules is that I don't talk to any investors external investors in between rounds, right? I'm making an exception for you today because it's a podcast, but Otherwise, I don't talk to anybody in between rounds because I feel like a lot of time it's …”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 38:12 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Delangue: Every Company Will Eventually Build and Run Proprietary AI Models
“I think the biggest thing is, in my opinion, all companies will have their own AI models. Like all companies will have their chat GPT or their GPT-IV.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 52:41 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Delangue: Only 50 to 100 People Globally Can Train State-of-the-Art AI
“I would say, you know, machine learning engineer, and by machine learning engineer, I mean someone who's really building a new architecture for AI models and able to train state of the art models. They are just in my opinion, a few people in the world who has …”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 56:19 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Delangue: VC Interest in AI Lags Behind Years of Massive Usage
“The VC and the mainstream interest is kind of like a catch up on the reality. Because if you look at usage of AI, it's been massive and it's been growing massively for the past, you know, three years, right? Even before, before ChatGPT, even before like, you k…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 5:25 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Delangue: 10 of 13 Meta LLaMA Authors Are Based in Paris
“I don't have the exact number, but I think 10 out of the 13 authors of Lama are actually based in, in Paris, right? In, in the Meta AI, lab that, that they have there that is huge.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 10:32 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Delangue: AI Industry Will Gain Fair Use Regulatory Clarity in 2023
“And it's gonna be good this year, I think, because we're going to start to have more legal clarity about, you know, how do we consider fair use what are the regulators expecting from AI companies to respect in terms of rules.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 19:51 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Delangue: Hugging Face Was First to Train AI on Opt-Out Datasets
“I think we were the first organization to train on a fully opted out data sets where developers could just remove themselves from the training.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 21:22 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hugging Face Has 15,000 Corporate Users and 3,000 Paying Customers
“We have 15,000 companies using us now. And then a smaller subset of companies are actually paying us, right? And for us, it's 3000 companies.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 23:23 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Meta, Bloomberg, and Grammarly Are Paying Enterprise Customers of Hugging Face
“3000 companies are paying us for that, including Meta, including Bloomberg, including Grammarly and companies like that.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 24:02 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Delangue: Hugging Face's Monetization Model Will Shift Within Five Years
“Probably the way we make money today is not going to be the way we make money in three years or in five years.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 26:34 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Delangue: AI Startups Cost More to Build Than Traditional Software Startups
“It does, a little bit. A bit similarly, in my opinion, to how, you know, like you would build like an internet company or like a software company, 20 years ago. Because compute is kind of like more expensive for AI than it is for traditional software. Because …”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 31:05 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Delangue: Fundraising Difficulty Depends on Momentum, Not Company Stage
“Something I didn't expect is that the way you raise Isn't so much dictated by your stage and your rounds. That's more dictated by the situation that you're in, in terms of traction, in terms of momentum, in terms of like achievements, right?”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 50:42 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Hugging Face Processed Billions of Chatbot Messages Before Open-Source Pivot
“We actually did that for almost three years. We raised our pre-seed and seed rounds on, on this idea. We got a product out with a couple of billion messages exchanged between users and this Tamagotchi AI.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 3:53 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Clément Delangue's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most David Cahn 3Mike Mignano 1Jason Lemkin 1Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

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Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 May 12, 2023 41m

Played on the show (2)

Episodes where a recording of Clément Delangue was played rather than Clément taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does Th Sep 15, 2023 36s clip played
20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really M Jun 2, 2023 46s clip played
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