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Nvidia-Hugging Face deal: Chip giant to buy AI platform for $12.93 billion
Nvidia-Hugging Face deal will expand the chipmaker’s role in open-source AI models as it looks beyond hardware for future growth.
Shares of Nvidia rose slightly after news of the deal broke on Thursday. (Image: Reuters)
Semiconductor giant Nvidia has announced that it’ll buy open-source artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, as the chipmaker explores options beyond hardware and asserts that support for open AI models will drive future demand.
Shares of Nvidia rose slightly after news of the deal broke on Thursday. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a blog post that with the deal, Hugging Face will “remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem.”
Jensen Huang says Hugging Face will remain open
The CEO further said, “Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.”
Deal puts Nvidia at centre of open AI models
The deal is being seen as a breakthrough for Nvidia as it is poised to catapult the chip maker as a central player in the market for open models that users can freely download, run, and customize. It is contrary to its competitors, including OpenAI and Anthropic, which have closed systems, Reuters reported.
Hugging Face CEO says platform was at ‘turning point’
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said that he approached Nvidia CEO Huang in the summer with a deal, “and a few weeks later, here we are.”
“During the summer, I think we realized that Hugging Face and open-source AI in general were at the turning point, and that it needed more, more resources, more scale, more visibility,” Delangue told CNBC on “Squawk Box.”
Hugging Face grew popular among AI developers
Founded in 2016, Hugging Face became popular among developers and researchers, who could find, share, and test AI models and tools. The online platform was in the news recently after rogue AI agents that escaped a testing environment appeared on its platform, which raised eyebrows in the industry about oversight and AI safety, BBC reported.
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Nvidia’s valuation crosses $5 trillion amid AI chip demand
Nvidia, whose market valuation has reportedly crossed $5 trillion, deals with manufacturing chips to train and run Artificial Intelligence systems. In recent times, demand for these chips has skyrocketed as companies race to build AI products.
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