Nvidia will acquire the artificial intelligence (AI) model-sharing platform Hugging Face for about 18 trillion won. With Nvidia, which has dominated the AI accelerator market, also securing the leading distribution platform for open-source AI models, it is expanding its influence across the broader AI ecosystem.
엔비디아가 인공지능(AI) 모델 공유 플랫폼 허깅페이스(Hugging Face)를 약 18조원에 인수한다. AI 가속기 시장을 장악한 엔비디아가 오픈소스 AI 모델의 대표적인 유통 플랫폼까지 확보하면서 AI 생태계 전반으로 영향력을 확대하는 모습이다.
According to tech outlet The Information on the 27th, Nvidia and Hugging Face agreed to sign an acquisition deal for $12.9 billion (about 17.9 trillion won).
Hugging Face is an AI platform corporations founded in 2016 by French entrepreneur Clément Delangue and others. It operates a platform where developers and corporations publish and share AI models and datasets. Used widely by major AI corporations such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, as well as startups and individual developers, it is called the "GitHub" of AI.
Hugging Face goes beyond a simple model repository to offer services that can run AI models on its own cloud infrastructure. Users pay a subscription fee along with expense based on computing usage, data storage volume, and more.
Nvidia's acquisition is seen as a strategy to expand its influence beyond AI Semiconductor chips to software and model distribution platforms. As major AI corporations such as OpenAI and Anthropic push to develop their own AI chips, Nvidia increasingly needs to expand an ecosystem in which a variety of open-source models run on its graphics processing units (GPUs).
Nvidia has expanded investment in the open-source AI ecosystem by developing its own open-source AI model, "Nemotron." In 2023, it also took part in a Hugging Face funding round. At the time, Hugging Face's corporate value was estimated at $4.5 billion. The purchase price this time is about three times that valuation.
Securing Hugging Face is also expected to provide a new sales channel for Nvidia's computing resources. Nvidia has been leasing its GPU-based computing capacity from cloud providers such as AWS and then offering it to corporate clients. By leveraging Hugging Face's cloud services, it can supply these computing resources more directly to AI developers and corporations.
However, some say the acquisition price is excessively high. Hugging Face's recent annualized revenue is reported to be about $150 million. The $12.9 billion price is about 80 times its revenue.
Delangue, the Hugging Face chief executive officer (CEO), said in the first half of this year that paid subscribers doubled and the company was close to turning a profit.