The Hugging Face is evaluating a possible sale for US$ 13 billion or more and is working with a bank to gauge interest from potential buyers. The conversations are still in early stages and no deal has been reached, reported the Business Insider on Sunday (23).
The deal, if it advances at this level, would place the company's value at almost three times the US$ 4.5 billion attributed to the startup in its last funding round, held in 2023.
Platform became a central piece of AI infrastructure
Founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face maintains a platform used by developers to publish, share, find, and use artificial intelligence models.
The company gained ground mainly as one of the main distribution points for open models, in addition to offering tools, datasets, and services aimed at the development and deployment of AI systems.
In 2023, the company raised US$ 235 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures that established its valuation at US$ 4.5 billion. Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and IBM were among the participants.
Interest in Hugging Face comes at a time when companies that control important parts of the infrastructure used by AI developers are being valued highly. Another recent move in the sector was Stripe's agreement to acquire OpenRouter, a platform that connects applications to different artificial intelligence models.
Hugging Face has already turned down an offer from Nvidia
The possibility of a sale also contrasts with a decision previously made by the company. At the end of 2025, Hugging Face rejected a proposal of US$ 500 million from Nvidia that would value the company at US$ 7 billion.
The offer was revealed by the Financial Times in January. At the time, Hugging Face said it did not want a single dominant investor in a position to influence its decisions.
More recently, Delangue said the company was close to profitability and had only recently begun to use part of the funds raised three years earlier.
The executive has also advocated a strategy focused on the company's long-term sustainability and the maintenance of its developer community, rather than maximizing new fundraising.
For now, there is no identified buyer nor guarantee that a sale will occur.
