Business Insider reported today that Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face, potentially resulting in one of Nvidia's largest deals to date.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the two sides have held serious discussions about an acquisition in recent weeks. The deal would value Hugging Face at more than $13 billion (note: approximately RMB 87.592 billion at the current exchange rate). The source said the two companies have not reached an agreement, and the talks could still fall apart.
Nvidia and Hugging Face did not respond to requests for comment.
The report also said that Microsoft had met with Hugging Face, but the source said that negotiations had not yet taken place.
The Financial Times previously reported that late last year, Hugging Face rejected Nvidia's $500 million investment offer (approximately RMB 3.369 billion at the current exchange rate), which would have valued the company at $7 billion (approximately RMB 47.165 billion at the current exchange rate). Hugging Face said at the time that it did not want a lead investor capable of influencing its decisions.
Hugging Face hosts millions of AI models and datasets for developers to build with. Owning the platform would give Nvidia a stronger foothold among these developers and could potentially shift more workloads to its chips.
However, Nvidia ownership could also threaten one of Hugging Face's advantages: neutrality. The platform supports models and hardware across the industry, including those of Nvidia competitors such as AMD and Intel.
The Information reported this week that Hugging Face is quietly becoming the GitHub of the artificial intelligence world, with its annualized revenue growth rate increasing by 50% in just two months and surpassing $150 million (approximately RMB 1.011 billion at the current exchange rate).
The report said Hugging Face generated approximately $70 million in revenue in 2023 (approximately RMB 472 million at the current exchange rate), about $130 million in 2024 (approximately RMB 876 million at the current exchange rate), and has now surpassed $150 million (approximately RMB 1.011 billion at the current exchange rate). This means the company's revenue has nearly doubled in less than two years.
Hugging Face uses a free-plus-premium business model, with approximately 3-5% of users converting to paid plans. Paid plans offer enhanced capabilities for high-usage scenarios and enterprise features. The platform hosts hundreds of thousands of models and serves tens of thousands of organizations, while its number of paying customers has grown to more than 2,000.