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Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face...
- archonis 1mo ago[flagged]
- echelon 1mo agoHugging Face has no path to substantial profitability and the investors and employees want liquidity. Nvidia doesn't want this to look like a bubble pop (as they have lots of GPU data center build outs to complete), they've got plenty of cash on hand, and they're an extremely good natural fit for the company. Nvidia is seeing its top frontier model customers develop their own chips to sidestep Nvidia and as a counter, Nvidia is investing in the open source ecosystem. Open source means more competition and more demand for GPUs rather than single all-powerful labs that can will their own chips into existence and begin to push Nvidia aside. Plus Nvidia is betting big on local inference for robotics. All of this is bolstered by open source. It's not like you can't just post model weights anywhere. There's really no lock in that Hugging Face has. If you're looking for real monopoly issues that distort market economics and make it hard to compete without paying taxes to your competitor, consider Google's ownership of 92% of URL bars or the Google / Apple duopoly of smart phone software distribution.
- sschueller 1mo ago> Nvidia is investing in the open source ecosystem Wasn't always the case and will probably only be as long as there is a self interest. > Linus Torvalds himself noted that the AI boom changed NVIDIA, turning them into a much better contributor to the Linux kernel Linus Torvalds: AI CHANGED NVIDIA.
- bigyabai 1mo agoIt generally was always the case. Nvidia was a huge stakeholder in technologies like OpenGL, OpenCL and Vulkan, supporting Khronos' goal to further expand the FOSS API ecosystem. Linus is probably referring to Nvidia's "open" driver series and capitulation on EGLStream. Nvidia got a terrible reputation for refusing to implement GBM for Wayland desktops, insisting on the nonstandard EGLStream protocol for close to a decade. Around 2024 (550-series drivers) they gave up and reworked their drivers for GBM-agnostic usage, fixing Wayland and generally resolving the biggest gripe people had against Nvidia hardware.
- bpodgursky 1mo agoHow do you anticipate NVIDIA using Hugging Face to abuse monopoly power?
- ilaksh 1mo agoOne big issue actually is that HF has the llama.cpp team, which is (was?) arguably the biggest threat to Nvidia's dominance through it's closed CUDA software.
- driverdan 1mo agoRegardless if this would qualify, anti-trust is dead in the US. Alphabet and Meta, for example, would have been broken up years ago if we still had anti-trust enforcement.
- archonis 1mo agoThe use of past tense was deliberate.
- unddoch 1mo agoTheoretically, can Nvidia direct Hugging Face to sue OpenAI now for the hack? Surely they could find some interesting stuff in discovery :)
- hmokiguess 1mo agoI was also theorizing that part of their acquisition was to get more intel on that, though I feel like in practice that whole thing right now is just theatre for inflating the cybersec market
- oh_no 1mo agothe last thing nvidia would want is to make ai look more legally risky to say nothing of their massive investments direct and indirect in openai
- jackb4040 1mo agoYep. In fact, eliminating that risk on OpenAI's behalf was probably a small factor in the acquisition
- Grombobulous 1mo agoThe OpenAI web page on the Hugging Face incident is so slick that it basically confirms that the entire incident was a marketing exercise. It’s obvious that designers and other content specialists spent multiple days crafting this page. https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/ https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-...
- pantalaimon 1mo agoThere was this summery about it, not sure how you'd need more intel - the technical details of the attack are ephemeral https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface
- LtWorf 1mo agoWhy would they sue one of their most important customers?
- lode 1mo agoDiscussed last week at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49458161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49458161
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- cmiles8 1mo agoNot sure why this is news again this week when it was already announced previously. NYTimes was also reporting this like it was news today.
- retinaros 1mo agoWasn’t official
- cmiles8 1mo agoSure, but that’s the case for basically all acquisitions.
- gk1 1mo agoUnfortunately not all deals go through. Like Wiz + Google, or Figma + Adobe. A lot can go wrong between “in talks to acquire” and “acquired.” The official announcement is less surprising but still newsworthy.
- the__alchemist 1mo agoIn related news, Voyager has left the solar system!
- Bluestein 1mo ago
- retinaros 1mo agoLife changing for engineers having joined a few year ago. Congrats
- iworshipfaangs2 1mo agoAnother investing W for Kevin Durant, who is likely producing better returns than most VCs while being a full-time athlete. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kevin-durant-investment-portfolio-15-120019205.html?guccounter=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kevin-durant-investment-portf...
- Grombobulous 1mo agoLet’s not forget to give credit to his family office. High net worth individuals don’t just personally do things like make investments themselves. They hire experts to do that. Sure, at some point Kevin Durant made the high-level decision that he wanted to invest in high-growth startup companies. But there’s a very low chance that he’s working the day-to-day of that process.
- ishtanbul 1mo agoI’d put it close to zero. He was likely presented with the deal once it was sourced and reviewed by his investment team, who likely did 100% of the work. It doesn’t mean he didn’t make the final decision, but pro athletes dont have time to do much investing work beyond high level networking and approving deals.
- bdcravens 1mo agoDurant is more than just an athlete who gets suggestions from those who handle his investments; he co-founded a venture firm ten years ago that has invested in over 100 companies. https://www.hustlefund.vc/post/angel-squad-kevin-durant-investments-what-kds-100-company-portfolio-teaches-angel-investors https://www.hustlefund.vc/post/angel-squad-kevin-durant-inve... While it's true he may not "do the work" and relies on those he's hired, the same is true of the Mark Cubans of the world.
- awad 1mo agoGoing to Golden State was fruitful for quite a few players. Great timing.
- arbuge 1mo agoThey approached Nvidia to start the conversation. I guess sometimes great companies are sold, not just bought.
- gk1 1mo agoHappy for the hugging face team. Many great folks there who’ve waited patiently for HF to find a business model, and finally they get something even better.
- philipwhiuk 1mo agoI don't really understand why the AI equivalent of Maven Central is worth 12.9 billion dollars but maybe I'm an idiot.
- retinaros 1mo agoIts a s3 wrapper. Can be replaced by a wordpress with torrents too. But they built an ecosystem around it and some libs/content. i guess thats what nvidia value
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- sieabahlpark 1mo ago[dead]
- tantalor 1mo agoNetwork effect. Same reason why Github (fancy file storage website) was worth $7B+
- unethical_ban 1mo agoWhat data can an be extracted from hf though? With GitHub you get a lot of user behavior analysis and can offer enterprise features and see private repositories.
- tantalor 1mo agoThe users are the product.
- unethical_ban 1mo agoI get that concept, but what part of the user is the product at HF? Even openrouter I get because at least it's a broker of all the user's information. HF to me is a glorified file host with no private user data access, no complex user interaction, etc. It feels like nvidia has money to burn and just wants to make sure they control the portal to open models in case it could benefit them at an unknown point in the future.
- sriniwasx 1mo ago[dead]
- trilogic 1mo agoHuggingface, llama.cpp and all European frontier. Congrats to Huggingface Team, that amount is tempting but nowhere near your real evaluation. You were about to blow up and there is no AI bubble (just not enough infrastructure like energy and hardware to process current and exponential inevitable growing tokens). Huggingface is bringing the real value to AI community, all the rest is more like scalping IMHO. Nvidia is a great company but not opensource friendly by historical doings. Today is a sad day for the community. Put a timer 2 year from now and mark this words: Huggingface is the free foundation, get what you can today.
- philkuz 1mo agoOutdated take. Nvidia now open sources whatever will make them sell more chips. Keeping the backbone of Oss model delivery afloat seems like it would sell more chips.
- tomalbrc 1mo ago> Nvidia now open sources whatever will make them sell more chips Oh what did they release?
- pixl97 1mo agoNVIDIA Nemotron is one example. I think they have some others related to robotics.
- homarp 1mo agonemotron? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46275111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46275111 parakeet? see https://huggingface.co/nvidia https://huggingface.co/nvidia for the current list
- philkuz 1mo ago* Tensorrt-LLM * Dynamo
- barrenko 1mo agoYes, also feel this is a massive underpricing.
- forestry 1mo agoDupe.
- sealthedeal 1mo agoThese Hugging Face guys made out like BANDITS!!!! Good for them. My favorite part is they approached Jensen for the buyout. They knew, very smart and mature on the founders/board.
- alexpadula 1mo agoMaybe they approached, tried to work together but then got bought out? Very common.
- sealthedeal 1mo agoI watched their CNBC interview this morning with Hugging Face CEO and Jensen. HF CEO specifically said they went to Jensen and said they wanted to join forces. Obviously more elegant lol.
- chews 1mo agoI don’t think many realize how hard it is to raise for a no revenue company that isn’t buying out large GPU contracts and racking machines. They have a winning product for sure… the worlds models have chosen a hugging face workflow, but honestly where would they be able to find the revenue required to justify another couple rounds at ever higher valuations. To me, I think these folks see that the music is getting harder to hear and might stop entirely, might as well cash out. I do hope their employees were well taken care of, and 13b of NVDA is likely to be worth a lot more in the coming years.
- willy_k 1mo ago> To me, I think these folks see that the music is getting harder to hear and might stop entirely At the frontier companies, but not for hugging face or nvidia. Their business are going to be around for a while considering how local models are performing now.
- slowin 1mo agoWhat is hugging face's business? I thought they were just free model hosting.
- luciana1u 1mo ago[flagged]
- ChrisArchitect 1mo ago$12,930,300,000? Hugging face emoji = HTML entity 珞 (https://x.com/calebfahlgren/status/2095516397879152851 https://x.com/calebfahlgren/status/2095516397879152851)
- croes 1mo agoIf you place those easter eggs the places literally worth millions I doubt that the price is really based on the value
- malwrar 1mo agoIs the fact that Nvidia is also massively financing the closed-models companies, which stand to lose when open model project(s) take off, a conflict of interest here? I can’t tell if this is nvidia hedging or planning to embrace & extinguish.
- pphysch 1mo agoNvidia is among the best positioned if open models win.
- gscott 1mo agoMost of nvidia's revenue comes from data center scale out. They will loose their ass if local models win.
- c0rruptbytes 1mo agoopen models don’t imply local models… it just allows more people to run them, most likely with nvidia GPUs
- pixl97 1mo agoAny model ran takes compute. Everybody, datacenters and local need compute. And I don't see a future where datacenters lose much to open models. I've ran local server rooms before clouds were a thing. Cooling and power is a very expensive pain in the ass. You're not dropping a rack of local models in most buildings without breaking the local power grid.
- malwrar 1mo agoWhat about when the open models get to the point that you don’t need these fancy GPUs? It seems inevitable this will happen over time, we see cracks right now within even just GPT w/ expert streaming and flash attention. ASICs are coming soon too.
- 1mo ago
- liquicity 1mo agoOpenrouter and huggingface both sold to multi billion dollar entities in the same few weeks - perhaps this is great for the founders, but as a consumer I hate this acquisition loop that happens with every company of adequate size these days.
- rvz 1mo agoOr maybe they know that this AI bubble will not last.
- colincowardly 1mo ago[dead]
- oefrha 1mo agoFeels like acquiring Docker Hub (just the hub, not even Docker Inc that controls Docker the software) in ~2018. AI craze valuations are truly out there.
- tetris11 1mo agoThere goes the free lunch
- deweywsu 1mo agoThere goes the neighborhood.
- rvz 1mo ago> Together, we will make AI more open, more capable and more accessible to people and institutions around the world. Agreed. Then maybe Nvidia should open source nvcc and CUDA the next software that should be open sourced.
- par 1mo agoIs it feasible for someone else to just start something almost identical by hosting a bunch of local models?
- doublerabbit 1mo agoNot without lots of money or decent network peering. A 30GB model downloaded a lot of times is a lot of bandwidth. There's more to than just the website, network bandwidth costs. Security, storage and infrastructure costs to name a few. You can't just spin up a VPS and host a brain jar shop.
- Capricorn2481 1mo ago> There's more to than just the website, network bandwidth costs. Security... Well they may have saved some money on one of those
- corysama 1mo agoMy understanding of Hugging Face is limited to "File Host with Model Cards". Can someone with more understanding explain what the $12 billion value comes from?
- eitally 1mo agoThey offer inference, too. I don't know anyone who uses this service, but presumably it must be reasonably popular.
- fennecbutt 1mo agoThey are the primary service for this. That comes with an audience and a lot of data.
- hmartin 1mo agoThis is the most compelling case I've come across: https://www.decodingdiscontinuity.com/p/nvidia-hugging-face-microduck https://www.decodingdiscontinuity.com/p/nvidia-hugging-face-... tldr; Acquisition is an option on Hugging Face becoming the distribution and data-creation infrastructure for open physical AI.
- zcw100 1mo agoI only learned about their CDN and protocol called Xet a couple of days ago https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/en/xet/index https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/en/xet/index That puts it in the Cloudflare of AI models category.
- SillyUsername 1mo agoSomebody better prep archive.org to buy a few more petabytes of storage.
- Danox 1mo agoThe goal of the deal is to speed up open source according to Nvidia what a laugh ha ha ha … Where is the EU in all this? Is this not similar to letting another European tech company disappear from Europe ie.. Arms Holding which was sold to the Japanese, how do you compete going into the future in the tech world if you let European companies be bought out by foreign companies. Declaring them gatekeepers down the road and issuing a fine will never make you a tech powerhouse. Is this just another symptom of the EU being run by politicians and lawyers who don’t seem to grasp/understand tech.
- porridgeraisin 1mo agoHF is an american company.
- bionhoward 1mo agoI personally think this acquisition is genius anybody who could afford it would be wise to own HuggingFace because they are incredible
- Psillisp 1mo agoNot A Bubble Not A Bubble Not A Bubble Not A Bubble Not A Bubble Not A Bubble
- harrouet 1mo agoImho, NVIDIA is buying two things here: - A workflow + distribution channel of open models, which sells GPU - A world-class AI infrastructure know-how, which is actually hard at this scale. I can imagine NVIDIA contemplating the opportunity to move up the value chain and sell inferences from open models at scale. You might think it would be a commodity, but they would have a strong cost advantage since they make the chips.
- 0skird 1mo ago[dead]
- meowsers 1mo agoI still don't get why Clem now approeached Jensen about it despite the fact that last year HF turned down a large investment from NVIDIA at a US$7bn valuation to "maintain its independence". https://aimagazine.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face https://aimagazine.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face https://www.ft.com/content/776dcb01-75cd-44df-bc52-63ca76d5718d?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/776dcb01-75cd-44df-bc52-63ca76d57...
- korr_ilands 1mo ago[flagged]