# Public AI on Hugging Face Inference Providers 🔥

[Hugging Face](https://yomu.fyi/company/hugging-face) · Joseph Low, Joshua Tan, Célina Hanouti, Julien Chaumond, Simon Brandeis, Lucain Pouget · Sep 17, 2025

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Hugging Face has integrated Public AI as a supported Inference Provider on the Hugging Face Hub. Public AI operates as a nonprofit, open-source project providing access to sovereign and public models from institutions such as the Swiss AI Initiative and AI Singapore. Its distributed infrastructure combines a vLLM-powered backend serving OpenAI-compatible APIs across partner-donated clusters with a global load-balancing routing layer. Users can access these models through the Hugging Face web UI, Python client SDK, and JavaScript SDK using either direct provider API keys or routed Hugging Face tokens. At the time of announcement, inference through the Public AI provider is free of charge, supported by donated GPU time and advertising subsidies.

## Context

Public and sovereign artificial intelligence model builders, such as the Swiss AI Initiative and AI Singapore, require accessible infrastructure to distribute their models for serverless inference.

## Approach / What changed

Hugging Face integrated Public AI as an Inference Provider across its Hub model pages and client SDKs in Python and JavaScript. Public AI uses a distributed infrastructure combining a vLLM-powered backend with OpenAI-compatible APIs deployed across partner-donated compute clusters, managed by a global load-balancing layer.

## Takeaways

- Public AI runs on distributed compute clusters donated by national and industry partners, utilizing a vLLM backend with OpenAI-compatible APIs and global load balancing.
- Hugging Face Inference Providers support two calling modes: direct access using a custom provider API key, or automatic routing through a Hugging Face authentication token.
- Python integration with Public AI requires huggingface\_hub version 0.34.6 or later when invoking the InferenceClient.

**Tags:** [LLMs](https://yomu.fyi/topic/llm), [Machine Learning](https://yomu.fyi/topic/machine-learning), [Open Source](https://yomu.fyi/topic/open-source), [Python](https://yomu.fyi/topic/python), [Serverless](https://yomu.fyi/topic/serverless)

[Read original post](https://huggingface.co/blog/inference-providers-publicai)