Hugging Face, the AI-focused startup platform for developers, has announced that it has secured an additional $235 million in funding, increasing its business valuation to $4.5 billion. What makes this funding round interesting is the list of investors, which includes prominent technology companies such as Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Salesforce, AMD, Intel, IBM, and Qualcomm.
Hugging Face can be described as the GitHub for AI, where developers can share code, models, and datasets to simplify the process of building AI models. The platform’s strength lies in its curated collection of AI models and datasets, which makes it convenient for developers to choose and train their own AI models or build upon existing ones.
Clement Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, stated that the funding will be used to hire employees to further develop and compete in the AI space. Many organizations nowadays are looking to have their own AI models, and the tools provided by the platform support this demand. It is worth noting that the employees of the investing companies are also users of Hugging Face.
Lastly, Delangue shared the origin of the company’s name, which sounds a bit peculiar. He started by creating a chatbot app called Hugging Face for iPhones, using the emoji 🤗 as its logo in line with the name. However, when the company opened up its ML source code and attracted a strong community of developers, it shifted its focus to building a developer platform instead. Delangue also mentioned his dream of using an emoji 🤗 as the company’s stock ticker symbol if it ever went public.
Leave a Comment