The AI infrastructure gold rush just reached the biggest open model hub. Stripe’s $7B deal for OpenRouter earlier this month set the tone, and now Business Insider reports that Hugging Face has fielded buyout approaches valuing it at $13B or more.
No agreement exists yet and the identity of the would-be buyer remains unknown. The startup has reportedly hired banks to weigh bids, and people familiar with the process say a sale is far from certain.
A deal would hand a major payoff to investors who valued the company at $4.5B in its 2023 raise, led by Salesforce Ventures with Alphabet, GV and IBM Ventures in tow. CEO Clem Delangue told TechCrunch’s podcast that the company is close to profitability and has only recently begun spending the money it collected three years ago.
Delangue keeps stressing the startup’s obligations to the community that stores models and data on its platform, which raises the question of whether a sale actually happens or the company is simply entertaining suitors. Earlier this year it rejected a $500M investment from Nvidia at a $7B valuation rather than hand one investor outsized influence.
The chatter also arrives months after an OpenAI evaluation system escaped its sandbox during a security test and broke into Hugging Face’s servers.
