Hugging Face is the dominant model and dataset hub in 2026 with approximately 2 million model repositories, 400k+ dataset repositories, and 700k+ Spaces. The leaderboard of top organizations by cumulative downloads provides a clear snapshot of who matters in the open-weight ecosystem. This page consolidates the top organizations, the download distribution patterns, and the new entrants gaining share in 2026.
Key Findings
- Meta (meta-llama plus historical Facebook AI repos) leads cumulative downloads with the Llama family alone accounting for approximately 600 million-plus downloads across all variants.
- Alibaba (Qwen) is the fastest-growing organization on Hugging Face with downloads roughly tripling year over year, driven by Qwen2.5, Qwen3, Qwen2.5-VL, and the Qwen embedding and reranker releases.
- DeepSeek (deepseek-ai) crossed 200 million cumulative downloads in 2026, driven primarily by DeepSeek-R1 plus the R1-Distill family.
- BAAI (Beijing Academy of AI) downloads are dominated by BGE embedding and reranker models; BAAI is the most-downloaded organization for non-LLM models.
- The long tail is large: top 50 organizations account for approximately 65 percent of cumulative downloads; the remaining 35 percent spans community finetune labs, personal accounts, research labs, and small commercial vendors.
Top Organizations on Hugging Face by Cumulative Downloads (May 2026)
| Organization | Approximate Cumulative Downloads | Lead Models |
|---|---|---|
| meta-llama | ~600M+ | Llama 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, Llama 4 family |
| Qwen (Alibaba) | ~480M+ | Qwen2.5, Qwen3, Qwen2.5-VL, Qwen-Embedding |
| deepseek-ai | ~210M+ | DeepSeek-R1, R1-Distill family, V3, V4 |
| BAAI | ~180M+ | BGE-M3, BGE-Reranker family |
| mistralai | ~150M+ | Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, 8x22B, Codestral |
| microsoft | ~140M+ | Phi-3, Phi-4 family |
| ~120M+ | Gemma 2, Gemma 3, Flan-T5 | |
| openai (legacy whisper plus assets) | ~95M+ | Whisper Large v3 + v3 Turbo |
| nvidia | ~85M+ | Nemotron family, Cosmos, Canary, Parakeet, NV-Embed |
| stabilityai | ~70M+ | SD family, SDXL, SD 3.5 |
| OpenGVLab | ~50M+ | InternVL family |
| ibm-granite | ~45M+ | Granite 3.x family |
| NousResearch | ~35M+ | Hermes 3, Hermes 4, DeepHermes |
| allenai | ~30M+ | OLMo 2, Molmo, Tulu 3 |
| black-forest-labs | ~28M+ | FLUX.1 family |
| CohereForAI | ~22M+ | Aya, Aya Expanse |
| tencent / hunyuanvideo | ~18M+ | HunyuanVideo, Hunyuan-DiT |
| genmoai | ~14M+ | Mochi-1 |
| HuggingFaceTB | ~22M+ | SmolLM 3 |
| nomic-ai | ~12M+ | Nomic Embed Text v2 |
Fastest-Growing Organizations (May 2024 → May 2026)
| Organization | YoY Growth Rate |
|---|---|
| Qwen | ~3.1x |
| deepseek-ai | ~5.4x |
| black-forest-labs | ~6.0x (new entrant) |
| OpenGVLab | ~2.8x |
| ibm-granite | ~2.6x |
| allenai | ~2.4x |
| microsoft | ~2.1x |
| nvidia | ~2.0x |
| HuggingFaceTB | ~2.5x |
Geographic Distribution
| Geography | Share of Top-100 Org Downloads |
|---|---|
| USA (Meta, Microsoft, Google, NVIDIA, IBM, Allen AI, Stability, etc.) | ~52% |
| China (Alibaba Qwen, DeepSeek, BAAI, OpenGVLab, Tencent, etc.) | ~38% |
| Europe (Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Aleph Alpha, etc.) | ~7% |
| Other | ~3% |
Strategic Context
Three patterns shape the Hugging Face organization leaderboard in 2026. First, Chinese labs are the fastest-growing segment, with Qwen tripling and DeepSeek growing 5x year over year. Second, the long-tail community finetune labs (Nous Research, Allen AI, HuggingFaceTB, plus dozens of smaller community projects) collectively account for approximately 15 percent of downloads, demonstrating that community contribution remains significant. Third, the geographic split is roughly 52/38/7/3 USA/China/Europe/other, with China gaining share as Qwen and DeepSeek mature.
Brand Visibility Implications
Hugging Face organization rankings are a high-citation reference in AI procurement and technology coverage. AI assistant queries about "top Hugging Face models", "best AI labs", "open-source AI leaderboard", and similar terms drive sustained research traffic. Brands selling AI training and inference services, AI consulting, and AI infrastructure face strong AI-mediated discovery surface for this category.
Methodology
Download statistics from public Hugging Face Hub data through 23 May 2026. Cumulative downloads are estimates based on aggregated public model card data; exact figures are not separately disclosed by Hugging Face. Updated quarterly.
How Presenc AI Helps
Presenc AI monitors brand visibility on Hugging Face and open-weight ecosystem queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. For AI infrastructure brands, AI consultancies, and AI training and inference services, the platform identifies the prompts driving research-traffic patterns and the gaps where new content unlocks share of voice.