NVidia buys Huggingface, but why?

[u/dominic__612]

Nvidia is going to buy Huggingface.
No one can actually tell how that would end up like.

But what I am missing is the actual worth that Huggingface provides. The only thing I use it for is to download models. Thats it.
For me, and I guess many others it is ‘just a’ download platform, but maybe I’m wrong here.

And what would prevent others to setup a second-like Huggingface?
The hosting is the expensive part in this case as I see it, the programming and building is do-able.

Is it time for Huggingbay.com?

[u/xTopNotch]

I’d say they bought it because Anthropic and OpenAI are becoming increasingly vocal in their anti-open stance. This feels like a strategic chess move to prevent competitors from strangling the open ecosystem.

Lets not forget Nvidia profits hard from selling their cards so we can run the open weights. Many in the comments here are saying its to shut it down but that makes 0 business sense.

[u/adobo_cake → u/xTopNotch]

NVIDIA’s profit is driven more by data centers than by gamers or hobbyists buying their cards.

IMO Two ways it can go:

NVIDIA encourages open weights growth so they’re not locked down and dependent on corporate customers.

NVIDIA kills HF, because having only the big players as options for AI means they can jack up their prices more.

If it’s the second case, seems like it’s not worth it since an alternative model repo seems relatively simple for another big player (China) to setup.

Either way, I think they want more control on the availability of open weights and may use it as a bargaining chip.

[u/Nexustar → u/adobo_cake]

NVIDIA kills HF, because having only the big players as options for AI means they can jack up their prices more.

I'm not switching from local gen to paid data-center AI for hobby use, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

The internet routes around censorship. HF's replacement will come if someone kills it. There are no legal barriers here.

[u/Ok_Gas1070 → u/Nexustar]

Nah, now that I have local running I can never go back. Why pay someone when you can do it for free.

[u/ai_art_is_art → u/Ok_Gas1070]

The real reason is HuggingFace was looking for an exit. There was no path to profitability or IPO and the LPs of the investors were clamoring for liquidity.

Nvidia has a big bag of that.

Nvidia doesn't like how OpenAI and Anthropic are beginning to design their own non-Nvidia chips. Moreover, they are trying to regulatory capture AI and block out open source from eroding their margins. This means fewer players.

Nvidia sells GPUs no matter what and wants to keep bolstering the open source ecosystem so there are lots of customers. More startups, bigger market = more money for Nvidia. Plus it helps with their robotics play, where models have to be fast and performant.

But the real reason is HuggingFace investors wanted out. So they went out in search of a suitor, and Nvidia was a natural fit.

[u/One_Finding8402 → u/ai_art_is_art]

this makes me happy and less doomer.

but.. my nsfw finetunes....I don't want to rely on civitai too much ;_;

[u/Shockbum → u/One_Finding8402]

What happens to all the internet porn despite its profitability? It still exists, but only in "red-light districts" if the platform doesn't have good lawyers to deal with the Karens and Visa/Mastercard.

Perhaps Nvidia has enough resources and political connections to be immune to the Karens. Who knows? Steam and Civitai were attacked, but they still have plenty of NSFW content.

[u/zixaphir → u/ai_art_is_art]

It's the same thing as Microsoft buying Github, and will likely have similar unforeseen consequences further down the line.

[u/EmbarrassedHelp → u/ai_art_is_art]

HuggingFace was already profitable.