During last month’s NeurIPS 2025 conference, YC’s @sdianahu sat down with @Thom_Wolf, co-founder and CSO of Hugging Face to discuss his unconventional journey from physics and law to building one of the most influential open-source AI platforms. They discussed why open research accelerates innovation, the real challenges of turning demos into products, and how great open models unlock the biggest opportunities for founders. 00:00 — From Physicist to Hugging Face Founder 01:50 — Switching Careers 02:45 — How Hugging Face Was Born (Almost by Accident) 04:50 — The Limits of Closed Models 05:45 — Why Demos Often Don’t Become Real Products 07:05 — Fine-Tuning vs. Scaffolding: Startup Tradeoffs 08:40 — Turning Research into Widely Used Products 09:50 — Designing Great Developer Experiences 11:55 — The Future: Open Models and the App Layer