The State of Open Models, Summer 2026 ☀️ frontier models are getting larger, but small models still…

TL;DR - Hugging Face’s Summer 2026 overview reports that open frontier models are growing while smaller models still dominate practical usage. It also highlights Qwen’s lead in local inference and rising agent activity on the Hub.

• Frontier open models continue to increase in size.
• Small models remain the most widely used in real-world deployments.
• Qwen leads local inference usage, followed by Gemma.
• AI agents are becoming a significant part of Hugging Face Hub activity.