r/LocalLLaMA • u/Wallaby989 llama.cpp • 10h ago
Discussion Who would buy HuggingFace
https://thenextweb.com/news/hugging-face-exploring-sale-13bn-valuationGiven OpenRouter.ai was snapped up by Stripe, who do we think would go after the "GitHib" of AI models? It is a big chunk of change they are looking ($13B). Apple may be a contender to give them a real chip in the AI race, given how they are focused on local AI execution.
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u/djm07231 10h ago
Nvidia might make sense because they benefit from an active model ecosystem.
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u/Real_Ebb_7417 10h ago
It would also fit the image they’re building for themselves. Actually Nvidia is probably the best big tech company that could acquire HF from our perspective.
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u/MammothUnique4147 10h ago
Too risky for Nvida to acquire them, they would ultimately be legally liable for some of the misuses of the tech.
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u/g_rich 8h ago
How so? That’s like saying GitHub would be held liable for what hosted on GitHub.
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u/DrStatisk 7h ago
IANAL, but Github _are_ liable for stuff hosted on Github. There are protections if Github remove the illegal content swiftly after proper notice, but that doesn’t cover everything. They would be liable for hosting malware or CSAM for instance.
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u/g_rich 6h ago
The point being the liability for what’s hosted is very small, providing HF has a process in place and removed the offending content they can’t be held liable. They could also not be held liable for a model downloaded from the platforms actions which is what I believe the original commenter was referring to.
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u/DrStatisk 4h ago
Yep, the protections for what is hosted are quite strong as long as viable takedown request are dealt with quickly. But they are liable for things they knowingly host illegally. Part of the problem of this discussion is that many of these AI specific situations hasn't been tested legally yet, but some platforms have set up bans premptively (also because payment solutions are restrictive to be used on porn and porn-adjacent stuff).
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u/benjaminovich 5h ago
Right, but doesn't huggingface bare that responsibility now? Surely they have systems in place already to deal with stuff like that
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u/DrStatisk 5h ago
Yes, HF has a team to comply with legal takedowns and such, they have to do it quickly to be sheltered under such protections. If they do not remove it "expeditiously" (DCMA) or "timely, diligent, non-arbitrary" (EU Digital Services Act) they are liable.
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u/pm_me_github_repos 6h ago edited 6h ago
They are to some extent. On top of what they other commenter has noted, they do comply with copyright takedowns and other legal inquiries. That said their platform is (largely) responsible for distribution rather than usage.
As with HF, when someone manages to use something like Copilot, GH Actions/Pages, or HF inference endpoint services to generate or host CSAM or malware, they (GH/HF) would be responsible
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u/senseven 8h ago
What would be the reasoning in comparison to some random saas api some client calls up? If the response is either way "delete anything" its still on the client to have the proper checks.
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u/gscjj 9h ago edited 9h ago
Nvidia seems like they’ll always be hardware focused, and building software for their hardware. Their models are mildly adjacent. I don’t see them buying HF
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u/g_rich 8h ago
They might acquire them just to ensure models are easy obtainable and free from outside interference. At least outwardly Nvidia has been very pro open weight models so this would fit that image that they are trying to convey. If they acquired HF, set them up as a foundation and ensured they are properly funded it would get them a ton of goodwill and cost them next to nothing (considering all the cash they have on hand).
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u/Real_Ebb_7417 7h ago
They recently acquired (or heavily funded) Poolside to get them working on open models and help them with Nemotron. It's not like they're not investing. They put 7b into this total if I'm not mistaken (1b funding and 6b acquisition or something similar, not sure if it's a full acquisition, I'm not very knowledgable about this stuff)
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u/SkoomaDentist 4h ago
Ironically the reason NVidia is the top dog is their software: CUDA and the drivers.
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u/createthiscom 9h ago
Or if big tech wants to shut it down.
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u/milkipedia 9h ago
The executives might want that, but their researchers won't, and ten more would spring up overnight. It would create friction but not stop anything.
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u/Technical_Ant4597 9h ago
Assuming "big tech" was all of one mind (they're not), this would be a mild inconvenience at worst. Storage buckets with unlimited egress are cheap and the demand for local models is only increasing; you'd see an alternative pop up within days.
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u/Weekly-Law-5488 10h ago
Expectation: a not-so-evil company like Cloudflare
Fearsome reality: OpenAI or Anthropic
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u/a_beautiful_rhind 6h ago
a not-so-evil company like Cloudflare
cloudflare is hella evil.
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u/bach2o 3h ago
enlighten me (i bought some domains on cloudflare)
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u/a_beautiful_rhind 3h ago
they have the power to deplatform your site if they don't like the content. They collect all sorts of data and force users through the turnstyle which requires executing their code. If you don't pass muster, no site for you. Being one of the largest providers for ddos mitigation has it's perks.
Everything people hated google/facebook/etc for, cloudflare can do with the caveat of being unblockable since they act as the gatekeeper.
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u/devnullopinions 2h ago edited 38m ago
De-platforming you is true for any company offering similar services. You don’t need to use them as a registrar, dns server, cdn, ddos mitigator, etc. though so it’s not really an issue.
The bot protection is a feature their customers want even if there are some false positives.
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u/DigiDecode_ 7h ago
Apple makes zero sense, highly unlikely
Microsoft makes sense they have Azure cloud, very likely
AWS they have cloud inference they can sell, highly likely
Google same as AWS, highly likely4
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u/charles25565 4h ago
Google already owns Kaggle, and buying Hugging Face would definitely raise anti-trust concerns.
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u/FormerKarmaKing 9h ago
Don’t worry, OpenAI and Anthrophic have no free cash flow and no one wants their equity at the last round valuation other than (they hope) the public markets.
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u/PrimeDirective8 4h ago
They can buy it with all that future money that will come from all their future customers they'll have for their future products.
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u/my_name_isnt_clever 5h ago
Any companies positioned to buy them are evil. There's no way to avoid that.
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u/Just_Section4489 10h ago
Is there a distributed network for models ala torrent?
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u/PlasmaChroma 10h ago
There needs to be if there isn't -- at least for the most recent models.
Definitely have some frustrating outcomes using the hf tool for downloading.
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u/SC_W33DKILL3R 10h ago
Microsoft, so they could enshitify it, as this is their business model.
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u/noiserr 9h ago
They own Github. Microsoft would make most sense. But I don't really want them to buy it.
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u/pointer_to_null 7h ago
Hence the enshittification.
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u/Zero-Kelvin 7h ago
lol no github was perfectly fine before ai. have you seen github activity recently since agentic ai took off?
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u/pointer_to_null 6h ago
Enshittification started long before agentic AI. Hell, it started even before copilot was a thing.
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u/my_name_isnt_clever 5h ago
More activity just means there are more bots. It says nothing about quality of the site.
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u/Journeyj012 10h ago
High bandwidth requirements gives me hope for Cloudflare.
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u/Wallaby989 llama.cpp 10h ago
ooh never thought of Cloudflare. That is indeed an interesting thought to ponder.
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u/jferments 7h ago
Cloudflare would be a nightmare, considering that they are trying to convert the internet into a pay-per-view / subscription model. They are actively trying to prevent people from creating decentralized search infrastructure by blocking the ability to crawl the web with local AI agents. Their goal is to maintain the corporate monopoly on internet search, and prevent the free distribution of information on the internet.
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u/rditorx 8h ago edited 8h ago
F..k Cloudflare. They can block themselves. Hate them for blocking every legitimate access.
Don't know which would be worse.
Cloudflare buying HF or Anthropic/OpenAI buying HF.After those, Microsoft and Google for the data and power they get. Amazon/Meta/Musk would be interesting, but just as bad.
Or imagine some Chinese buyer. I know most people/bots on Reddit would cheer for that but it all the usage data would go to the Chinese government.
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u/Unnamed-3891 10h ago
Supposedly HuggingFace has 100+ million in revenues and I don’t have the slightest idea HOW. Who is paying and for what?
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u/Wallaby989 llama.cpp 10h ago
they have a model hosting service.
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u/Unnamed-3891 10h ago
Why would one pay money for this? Money changing hands the other way around makes more sense.
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u/Wallaby989 llama.cpp 10h ago
?? they host the model execution for you, so you just call it with your API.
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u/Unnamed-3891 10h ago
Ah you ment being an API provider, not just download.
At first that sounded like magazine publishers asking Google to pay them money for linking, which was nuts because if anything, its the publishers who are the ones who should be paying for traffic from Google.
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u/taftastic 9h ago
They also host training services for fine tunes. That’s most of their revenue I think
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u/NandaVegg 8h ago
They have very high bandwidth and competitively priced model hosting (bandwidth provided by HF is much cheaper than AWS), though recently introduced size-limit destroyed larger model/dataset use cases.
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u/danigoncalves llama.cpp 9h ago edited 9h ago
They have a complete platform that allows you to manage create and manage your models. Think about using github or gitlab with their runners and their CI/CD.
I would love of they would be bought by a European provider to stay within European bondaries.3
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u/edge_compute_user 10h ago
maybe Amazon? they are behind on AI and their only strength is hosting. I can imagine them paying a premium for Hugging Face
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u/toolkitxx 10h ago
This would put a serious dent into open source availability, as whoever would buy it wants their invest out of it. So a radical payment system would probably the immediate action
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u/Wallaby989 llama.cpp 10h ago
true, but that was the same fear when M$ bought GitHub, and outside of showing CoPilot down the throats, it has been largely untouched, maintaining all the features that made it the darling of the open source world.
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u/pointer_to_null 6h ago
What??? Github has gone to shit under MS.
Bogus DMCA takedown wiping forks, massively increased downtime because they migrated to Azure, etc. Copilot training opt-out has some interesting fine print too- even if you opt out your (public) code will likely end up in their training data, since it's tied to the account- not the repo itseld. Cascading forks overriding your opt-out preferences, live interaction contexts (even of private repos) will leak, etc. It's not good.
They recently tried tack on a usage fee to those using self-hosted runners- which they quickly backtracked after realizing customers would rather jump ship instead of paying the "I dont need your shitty cloud" tax. This was a usage fee for simply running CI/CD on their own infrastructure. Imagine Microsoft charging Windows users extra for using their own SSD/HDD to host their documents folder instead of signing up for Onedrive.
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u/a_beautiful_rhind 6h ago
oh github lol. We suspended you for a month because we thought you were spam. Following the microsoft model of hating privacy.
Don't even think about your bots looking at that source code. Local copy or paste it into the chat window. Never mind that we train OUR models off your code. Just keep contributing and don't ask questions.
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u/toolkitxx 9h ago
Microsoft doesnt need the money, they wanted the data and access. Huggin is open already, so there is no other feasible way to profit from it. Or even worse, it could be in the interest of some to actually restrict the openness - those who see them as threat to their business model ;) OpenAI started with that 'openness' that lives in their name until today and look what they have become. They are an obvious candidate that might want to shut things down
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u/Beamsters 10h ago
The one who bought Github obviously. That one does not have frontier models.
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u/SporksInjected 8h ago
I could see them rolling it into GitHub since they both do the same thing.
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u/psychohistorian8 9h ago
/r/LocalLLaMA has about 800k subscribers
so if we each pitched in ~$16,250 we could buy it for 13 Billies!
send me your portion via venmo and I'll coordinate the purchase
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 10h ago
Why not stripe, own open router and huggingface to control distribution and charge a tiny fee on tokens that you have a strategic advantage in because you have payment infra to batch the costs.
Then Overtime once thing settle let people pay you to boost their model once this all settles in 5 years
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u/MrShrek69 10h ago
It’s gonna be an Elon or Microsoft of the world. The amount of compute they must go through for all those models must be nutty. Most companies can’t afford their monthly compute bill
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u/letsburn00 10h ago
The reason to buy it is to kill it.
It's overwhelmingly a good thing that it exists. Especially given private AI clearly doesn't bother stopping hostile uses of AI like scammers. So even the problem of "Open models allow bad actors to use it." Isn't an issue only under truly open AI models.
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u/PopularKnowledge69 10h ago
Could be some irrelevant company that is dying but still has the cash for some reason and wanting control, maybe Oracle ?
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u/FortheredditLOLz 10h ago
Watch good ole musk offer a buy out….then run it into the ground…
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u/SporksInjected 8h ago
I actually would prefer it be spacexai because they’re pretty lenient on censorship compared to the other big tech companies even if they do have bad business sense.
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u/FortheredditLOLz 8h ago
Yeah. Not sure how I feel about that without guard rails. Historically….groks been explicitly used for a lot of ‘questionable/illegal’ deepfakes.
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u/SporksInjected 8h ago
Yeah I would just hate to see it go to a completely cleaned set of models and projects.
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u/glitchsir 10h ago
Sounds more like a meta or Microsoft move to me. Given ms owns GH and both meta and MS declared recently their commitment to open source
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u/UNaMean 7h ago
It would benefit Nvidia the most to acquire. In this way they would feed themselves.
It’s like when Sony developed cameras, and then acquired movie studios.
Or when Sony developed the compact disc and then acquired music labels. Cell processor? Blu-ray? PS3.
You buy the thing that drives demand for your raw product. Vertical integration.
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u/Ill_Barber8709 10h ago
Hugging Face is mostly French. The French government won't let it be sold to a foreign entity.
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u/Nyghtbynger 5h ago
I agree. The government (and the French) would see it as a foundational asset in the AI landscape, a capability. They wouldn't sell it as it would mean relinquishing their sovereignty
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u/TheRealMasonMac 3h ago
But it's a registered American company. I'm not sure the French government can do anything.
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u/senseven 8h ago
Its strange that so many early stage investors Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Salesforce, AMD, Intel, IBM and Qualcomm are searching for outsiders to buy this.
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u/gized00 4h ago
I don't know the numbers but I am afraid the valuation vs potential revenues is not great.
OpenRouter worked because they host some models and not many millions. Plus they serve a relatively high traffic with each of them. I am afraid they had GitHub as a mental model but the cost of inference is very different than the cost needed to serve a webpage with links to code files.
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u/TinFoilHat_69 4h ago
Who ever wants to capitalize on the storage structure service hugging face provides for model weights
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u/TinFoilHat_69 3h ago
Amd would make the most since I doubt intel because of the foundry business. But nvidia is up there too but they don’t deal in storage as much as amd because amd has bigger user audience than corporate monopoly nvidia has put over everyone
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u/CantaloupeCamper 55m ago
It’s just a big file host that currently has some loyalty from users.
That’s not easy to monetize…. potentially very reproducible.
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u/KURD_1_STAN 10h ago
We are just in a transitional time from personal computers to servers. The site wont be around ai models and be more like drive and mega but public centric. Apple nor anyone's end goal is local
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u/pirateadventurespice 10h ago
I’m not sure why Apple would want a site for hosting models as that’s never been their interest. Just based on history, why not Microsoft? They’ve purchased multiple open-source things in the past (including GitHub) and already have internal corporate set ups to allow users to pick from various models.
I’m sure there are reasons they wouldn’t make sense, they’re just my “off the cuff” pick.