Microsoft Expands Hugging Face Partnership to Bring 10,000+ AI Models to Azure

At the Microsoft Build conference, CEO Satya Nadella announced an expanded partnership with Hugging Face to make thousands of open-source AI models easily deployable on Azure’s secure infrastructure.

As of today, over 10,000 Hugging Face models can be accessed via Azure AI Foundry, supporting AI applications across text, audio, and image modalities.

Building on their initial collaboration launched two years ago, the new agreement aims to empower developers and enterprises to securely deploy AI models alongside private data—offering greater transparency, flexibility, and scalability.

“Open source is how AI moves faster—with transparency, choice, and community at its core. This collaboration represents our commitment to that momentum,” Asha Sharma, Corporate VP at Microsoft, said.

Hugging Face now hosts nearly 2 million models, reflecting the explosive growth of the open AI ecosystem.

"We’re enabling companies to take control of their AI destiny, deploying the best open models securely within their Azure account, to build AI applications they can trust and verify," Clement Delangue, CEO and cofounder at Hugging Face, said.

The partnership will also enable Azure AI Foundry to offer the latest models from top providers on the same day they launch on Hugging Face.