Hugging Face, a repository for open-source AI models, has secured significant investments from major tech players including Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and Salesforce. The demand for access to AI models has led to a Series D fundraising round that raised $235 million for Hugging Face. This funding has propelled the company’s valuation to $4.5 billion, reflecting the growing interest in generative AI among investors.
The platform, often likened to GitHub for AI models, codes, and datasets, has gained support from notable investors including AMD, Intel, IBM, and Nvidia, who have all shown substantial investment in foundational generative AI models and the processors that run them. The CEO of Hugging Face, Clement Delangue, stated that the new funds will be directed towards expanding the existing team of 170 members and further investment in open-source AI and platform development. This investment reinforces the significance of the open-source community in fostering the growth of the generative AI field.
Hugging Face is home to several well-known generative AI models, including Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and Meta’s Llama 2 and its variations. In collaboration with Amazon’s AWS, Hugging Face has designated AWS Cloud as its preferred cloud provider. Despite potential misconceptions surrounding the term, open source plays a crucial role in the generative AI community, with major AI companies opting to release their models with varying degrees of openness. This approach allows developers to experiment while still adhering to limited user licenses.
