Facebook parent Meta is partnering with the application development platform Hugging Face and European cloud infrastructure company Scaleway to launch a new AI-focused startup program at the Station F startup megacampus in Paris.
Underpinning that goal is a rise in a more "open and collaborative" approach to AI development across the entire French technology world.

Timing is also revealing, coming as it does against the rising tide of voices calling for regulation and sharpening conflict between the "open" and "closed" worlds of AI.
Many of the world's greatest tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, which created the new ChatGPT model, actually advocate more regulation and warn about the threat posed by AI-all while they build ever stronger AI. Among these arguments, some are focused on the danger of open-source AI and how it might be exploited by bad actors. On the other side of the argument is the notion of these tech companies being nothing more than scaremongers who want to lobby regulators into embracing a more "closed" AI development ethos whereby they save themselves from others' competition.

Meta firmly falls on the latter side of this fence. The company's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun recently added his name - and that of over 70 others - to a plea for greater openness in AI development, cautioning against the dangers of too much haste in regulation.

"History shows us that quickly rushing toward the wrong kind of regulation can result in concentrations of power in ways that hurt competition and innovation," the letter noted. "Open models can inform an open debate and improve policy making. If our objectives are safety, security and accountability, then openness and transparency are essential ingredients to get us there."

And it is in that space that Meta is partnering with one of the largest players in the open-source AI arena.

While Meta itself has also been open-sourcing its own generative AI models, for example, Hugging Face — another billion-dollar VC-backed startup in its own right — has made it clear that it wants to play as some kind of open source alternative to OpenAI, full with open alternatives to the likes of ChatGPT and spearheading community projects like BigScience.

So in many ways, today's Meta and Hugging Face tie-up makes a lot of sense, considering the respective stances each has taken on the whole "open" versus "closed" AI discussion.

"For me, open source AI is the most important topic of the decade as it is the cornerstone toward democratizing ethical AI," Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement.

Open foundation
From today until December 1, startups are open to apply for this new "AI Startup Program" at Station F, with five winners moving on to the accelerator program, which will run from January to June. That is to say, those chosen by the judges from Meta, Hugging Face, and French cloud company Scaleway will at least share one thing in common: They'll be working on projects with a substantively based fundament on open foundation models, or at least can demonstrate a "will to integrate those models into their products and services," an announcement issued by Meta today describes. 

This includes open, state-of-the-art models, resulting from the proliferation of foundation models and generative artificial intelligence models, to be brought to the French ecosystem, benefiting the economy and technology.

For its part, it's almost fascinating that Meta has chosen to go around the big cloud infrastructure companies - and open-source AI naysayers, if you will - like Microsoft and Google, and chose a smaller, independent European player in the form of Scaleway.

The winning startups will receive mentoring from researchers and engineers at Meta, access to Hugging Face's various platforms and tools, and compute resources from Scaleway.

While it's perhaps not fair to say that Meta has retreated from its lofty metaverse aspirations, quite a bit has shifted in the last 12 months. Almost exactly a year ago, Meta partnered with L'Oréal and French business school HEC to launch a startup accelerator at Station F focused on all-things VR/AR/MR. But with the ChatGPT and generative AI hype train gathering steam, something a little more near-term is what Meta must refocus its efforts on, and that is where this new accelerator program comes in.