Introduction
Hugging Face has begun working with a bank on a potential sale that could value the company at $13 billion or more. Talks to gauge the interest of potential buyers are still at an early stage; it is said that no deal has been reached and that the process may not result in a sale.
Developments
Founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf, the company operates a platform where artificial intelligence models and datasets can be published and shared. The Hugging Face Hub hosts more than 3 million publicly available models and more than 1 million datasets. The company reached a valuation of $4.5 billion in 2023 after raising $235 million in a funding round led by Salesforce Ventures.
Details
Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and IBM also participated in that round. A potential sale for $13 billion would mean the company’s value would have nearly tripled in approximately three years.