Hugging Face Explores $13 Billion Sale a Month After a Rogue OpenAI Agent Hacked It

In brief

• Hugging Face is working with a bank to gauge buyer interest in a sale that could value the AI developer platform at $13 billion or more.
• No deal has been reached and no buyer has been named.
• A $13 billion price tag would nearly triple Hugging Face's $4.5 billion 2023 valuation.

Hugging Face is exploring a sale that could value the company at $13 billion or more, Business Insider reported Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. Per the reports, the company has retained a bank to gauge interest from potential buyers, but no deal has been reached, and it isn't clear who Hugging Face has been talking to.

A $13 billion price tag would nearly triple the $4.5 billion valuation Hugging Face set in its 2023 Series D—a late-stage funding round startups raise once they've already proven demand. That round brought in $235 million and was led by Salesforce Ventures, with Google and Nvidia also putting money in.

The company has turned down big checks before. Late last year it rejected a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued it at $7 billion, worried a single investor would gain too much say over its decisions. CEO Clément Delangue has framed Hugging Face's relationship with the developers who host their work on the platform as a long-term commitment, not something to trade away casually.