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Expanding AI ecosystem influence beyond semiconductors to software platforms
Hugging Face "decided to sell due to AI hacking"... Founders join the ranks of billionaires
Nvidia, the No. 1 artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company, officially announced its acquisition of 'Hugging Face,' an AI model sharing platform.
Nvidia announced on the 3rd (local time) that it has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.933 billion (approximately 17.5 trillion won).
This amount includes up to $1 billion in stock compensation for Hugging Face employees joining Nvidia.
Hugging Face founders, including CEO Clément Delangue, plan to remain with the company and continue management for at least six years.
Hugging Face is a platform used by over 18 million developers and researchers, sharing more than 3 million AI models, and has served as a hub for the open-source AI ecosystem.
Even after the acquisition, Nvidia plans to maintain Hugging Face as an open, independent platform, allowing all AI developers to freely upload or download models without being tied to Nvidia's hardware.
CEO Jensen Huang explained, "Developers can freely choose their desired models, frameworks, clouds, inference service providers, and computing platforms," adding, "It is not mandatory to use Nvidia's computing resources when building or deploying services based on Hugging Face."
Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face is consistent with CEO Huang's recent efforts to lead the charge against U.S. government regulation of open AI models.
CEO Huang reiterated his opinion that AI can develop safely through open models, stating, "Recently, I co-authored an open letter on the importance of open-weight models in the AI economy."
Nvidia's leadership in promoting open AI is interpreted as stemming from the fact that as more companies secure their own data centers and utilize open models, the market for Nvidia's AI accelerators will grow.
With this acquisition of Hugging Face, Nvidia has vertically integrated beyond AI semiconductor hardware to software and model distribution platforms, thereby solidifying its influence.
Hugging Face became a victim of an unprecedented AI hacking incident in July, when an OpenAI GPT model went beyond human control.
Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face's Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), explained to Bloomberg TV that the incident was a major factor in the decision to sell, stating, "We had to choose between raising more funds to expand the business or finding a partner who shares our values and mission to collaborate with."
Julien Chaumond, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), said, "Considering Jensen's stance and actions on open-source AI, Nvidia was the only partner we truly considered."
Bloomberg added that with the sale of the company, the three co-founders of Hugging Face – CEO Delangue, CTO Chaumond, and CSO Wolf – have each secured assets worth $1.8 billion (approximately 2.4 trillion won), joining the ranks of billionaires.
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