Hugging Face was recently the victim of a rogue AI attack by OpenAI that has alarmed cybersecurity experts. The CEO of Hugging Face has called for OpenAI to donate $100 million in compute to the company, though it’s unclear whether that will ever happen.
The Hugging Face CEO, Clement Delangue, gave his first interview since the incident on Friday to CNN. And Delangue’s answer to questions about possible legal action against OpenAI is pretty interesting. It seems Delangue is hinting that his company isn’t big enough to really take on the frontier AI companies in court. But if they donate $100 million in compute, they have nothing to worry about anyway.
“You’re asking OpenAI as part of it for them to commit $100 million in compute to help the Hugging Face community to build powerful cyber defenses,” CNN host Kate Bolduan asked Friday. “Has OpenAI responded to that?”
Delangue said they were having “good conversations” with OpenAI and that the company had been a good partner even before this intrusion. But then he pivoted into his suggestion that there could be serious consequences for OpenAI in this situation.
“Everyone has to remember that this cyberattack is a crime. This is illegal. And we have to find a way to make sure these things don’t happen more regularly,” said Delangue. “And so I think they understood kind of like the seriousness of this event and are trying to take measures that are aligned with the seriousness of this event.”
CNN’s Bolduan emphasized that this was an unprecedented event and that cyberattacks are crimes. She then asked what will happen if Hugging Face doesn’t get a $100 million commitment from OpenAI. Specifically, she asked whether Hugging Face might consider legal action.
“We don’t want to,” responded Delangue. “I think the world and AI needs more collaboration than kind of like adversarial […] actions. Obviously, we’re a tiny startup with like 200 people, and we don’t necessarily have kind of like the legal resources or the will to spend our time on legal avenues.”
Hugging Face's
[@ClementDelangue]asked on CNN whether they will take legal action against OpenAI if they don't get the $100M commitment: "We don't want to … obviously we're a tiny startup with like 200 people and we don't necessarily have the legal resources or the will to spend…[pic.twitter.com/53zEYmMUiG]— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold)
[July 31, 2026] Delangue then noted that OpenAI isn’t the only company that’s been responsible for recent cyberattacks. Anthropic released information on Thursday after an internal audit spurred by OpenAI’s admission.
“I think we have to make sure that the legal frameworks keep these events really illegal, keep the companies that are doing some mistakes leading to that accountable. Otherwise, we’re going to end up in a very different world,” said Delangue. “We don’t want to end up in a world where doing cyberattacks on other companies is normalized.”
To be clear, there’s no indication that OpenAI will face any criminal probe into its AI attacks. And Sam Altman is unlikely to face any consequences for his rogue AI’s intrusions. But if Altman were some random teenager without the political connections of OpenAI, it would likely be a very different story.