Hugging Face cofounder pushes back on claim AI labs care only about profit
Thom_Wolf · x · 2026-09-15
Hugging Face cofounder Thom Wolf responds to Mervenoyann's criticism that AI companies 'were never concerned with anything other than making profits':
- He argues such companies would not have started as nonprofits/PBCs or waited as long as OpenAI and even Anthropic to earn their first dollars if profit were the only motive.
- But he concedes they certainly need revenue now.
- Merv's original point: labs have mainly automated white-collar jobs to prove tokens are cheaper than humans (still unproven for many jobs) or cannibalized their customers, all as a runway to IPO.
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