NVIDIA buys Hugging Face for $13B
What's the story
NVIDIA has announced its decision to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The deal will bring one of the most popular platforms for hosting open-source AI models, datasets, and tools under the umbrella of the world's leading AI chipmaker. Hugging Face was founded in 2016 as an online platform where AI developers could share their projects and data with other users and the general public.
Platform features
Hugging Face is often dubbed the 'GitHub' for AI
Often dubbed the "GitHub" for AI, Hugging Face is known for its browsable library of open-source machine learning models and community collaboration features.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in his announcement that they will scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure, and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.
He assured that Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem.
Future plans
NVIDIA's acquisition comes after Hugging Face explored sale options
Huang emphasized that developers will have the freedom to choose their preferred models, frameworks, clouds, and inference service providers, as well as computing platforms.
He also clarified that NVIDIA compute won't be mandatory for building or deploying through Hugging Face.
Acquisition strategy
Acquisition strengthens NVIDIA's position in AI hardware market
The acquisition of Hugging Face by NVIDIA is seen as a strategic move to maintain its AI hardware dominance.
This comes as closed-source AI providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are trying to build their own AI chips.
The last official valuation of Hugging Face was $4.5 billion after a funding round in 2023 that NVIDIA had participated in.
Financial outlook
Hugging Face generated about $150 million in annualized revenue
Despite its high purchase price, Hugging Face isn't a major money-maker.
The Information reports that the company has been generating about $150 million in annualized revenue.
However, as the world's most valuable public company, NVIDIA appears willing to spend big bucks to protect its growing AI empire.
Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said they needed more compute, support, collaboration, and visibility for their platform at a larger scale.
Model development
NVIDIA has been a strong advocate for open models
NVIDIA has been a strong advocate for open models. The company has released more than 500 models and 250 open datasets on Hugging Face.
Huang said almost all open models run on NVIDIA hardware, highlighting their importance in cybersecurity.
He noted that frontier models are crucial for enabling massively distributed, continuously running autonomous cybersecurity systems to defend against threats.