Hugging Face hits $4.5B valuation with big tech backing
Hugging Face just closed a massive $235M Series D round at a $4.5B valuation, drawing checks from virtually every major tech giant including Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. The milestone round comes as the open-source AI hub crosses over 1 million shared models, datasets, and apps.
Big Tech rarely agrees on anything, but everyone just wrote a check to the same AI startup.
Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue announced that the company raised a $235 million Series D at a $4.5 billion valuation.
A rare neutral ground
The investor roster reads like a who's who of computing. Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm Ventures, IBM, Salesforce Ventures, and Sound Ventures all backed the round.
The raise comes as Hugging Face officially crossed 1,000,000 models, datasets, and apps hosted on its platform.
Delangue noted that these investor partners alone have already shared over 1,000 open models and datasets on the site, with more than 10,000 of their own employees using the platform.
Why it matters
Hugging Face has cemented itself as the default GitHub of machine learning. If you build with open-source AI, you live on this platform.
What makes this deal fascinating is the cap table. Cloud rivals like Google and Amazon sat right alongside bitter chip competitors like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
We think this shows none of the tech giants could afford to let a rival own the primary distribution hub for open-source AI. By collectively backing Hugging Face, they keep it neutral, ensuring their own chips and cloud services remain plug-and-play options for millions of developers.
Sources (1)
- twitter.com(opens in a new tab)Originaltwitter.com