AI is moving fast — but who decides how it’s built, shared, and scaled? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 in San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re diving in with Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, for a session on what it takes to make cutting-edge research and models truly open and accessible. Catch him on the AI Stage, along with thousands of other like-minded tech leaders and innovators.

The future of AI won’t just be defined by closed labs and big tech budgets — it will be written in open-source repos, global research collaborations, and moonshot experiments that anyone can build on. Wolf brings a rare perspective on how to bridge research, community, and real-world applications in ways that shape both the technology and the ecosystem around it.

Whether you’re a founder, developer, or investor, this session offers a clear view of where AI is headed — and how openness can drive the next wave of breakthroughs.

Wolf has been at the center of some of the most important advances in AI. At Hugging Face, he helped launch the Transformers and Datasets libraries, led the BigScience Workshop on large language models that produced BLOOM, and has championed open science across industry and academia. He’s also co-author of Natural Language Processing with Transformers and The Ultra-Scale Playbook, resources shaping how the next generation of AI practitioners learn and build.

Join 10,000+ startup and VC leaders October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco, with headline-making sessions, hands-on discussions, and intentional networking designed to fuel your next move. Disrupt 2025 is where the future of tech gets built and where we celebrate 20 years of TechCrunch. Lock in your pass now to save up to $668 with Regular Bird pricing before it ends September 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT.