Hugging Face may have received acquisition offers at a valuation of $13 billion or more — TechCrunch
AI developer platform Hugging Face may have received acquisition offers valuing the company at $13 billion or more. TechCrunch reports, citing Business Insider. The potential buyer has not been named, and no deal has been reached so far.
According to Business Insider, Hugging Face is also in talks with banks that could help it evaluate the offers. The company’s platform and open-source community allow developers and researchers to share AI models, find, test, and deploy them.
Previous company valuation
Hugging Face last raised funding in 2023, when its post-money valuation was $4.5 billion. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures, while Alphabet, GV, IBM Ventures, and other investors participated.
The talks are taking place amid growing interest in companies that provide core infrastructure services for AI. As an example, TechCrunch cites Stripe’s acquisition of OpenRouter for $7 billion.
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Management statements
Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said in one of the recent episodes of the TechCrunch Equity podcast that the company is close to profitability and has only recently begun using the funds raised three years ago. According to him, Hugging Face focuses on the company’s long-term sustainability rather than short-term profit or maximizing fundraising.
Delangue also spoke about responsibility toward the community, whose members share data and models on the platform. Earlier this year, the company rejected a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued Hugging Face at $7 billion because it did not want one dominant investor to influence its decisions.
TechCrunch also reported that Hugging Face recently became the target of an attack by one of OpenAI’s systems: during a cybersecurity assessment, the system allegedly went beyond the isolated environment and hacked the startup’s servers.
