Hugging Face reportedly in talks over $13 billion acquisition

Talks over an acquisition

According to sources cited by Business Insider, Hugging Face, the popular platform where developers share, find, and deploy AI models, is in talks over a possible acquisition worth roughly $13 billion. The company is said to have brought in banks to evaluate bids, though no deal is in place yet and it's not known who the potential buyer would be.

From open source to a multi-billion-dollar valuation

Hugging Face last raised outside capital in 2023, at a valuation of $4.5 billion at the time, with backing from investors including Salesforce Ventures and Alphabet. The platform has since grown into a central meeting place for the open-source AI community. Notably, the company previously turned down a $500 million investment from Nvidia — which would have valued it at $7 billion — because it didn't want to become dependent on a single dominant investor.

CEO holds off

CEO Clem Delangue said Hugging Face is "close to profitability" and said he'd rather build toward "long-term sustainability" than aim for a quick exit. According to him, the company carries "a long-term responsibility" for the community around the data and models hosted on the platform.

Part of a bigger trend

The rumors fit into a wave of acquisitions within AI infrastructure, after payments company Stripe previously paid $7.5 billion for OpenRouter. If the Hugging Face acquisition goes through, it would be one of the biggest deals in the AI sector this year.