Company:Hugging Face

From HandWiki
Hugging Face, Inc.
TypePrivate
IndustryArtificial intelligence
Founded2016; 10 years ago (2016)
Headquarters20 Jay Street,
Brooklyn, New York City
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Clément Delangue (CEO)
  • Julien Chaumond (CTO)
  • Thomas Wolf (CSO)
RevenueIncrease US$150 million[1] (2025)
Number of employees
250[2] (2025)
Websitehuggingface.co

Hugging Face, Inc., is an American company based in New York City that develops computation tools for building applications using machine learning. Hugging Face's Transformers library is built for natural language processing applications. The Hugging Face platform allows users to share machine learning models and datasets and showcase their work.[3] Hugging Face, Inc. agreed to an acquisition by Nvidia in August 2026.

History

Founding

AI boom

On April 28, 2021, the company launched the BigScience Research Workshop in collaboration with several other research groups to release an open large language model.[4] In 2022, the workshop concluded with the announcement of BLOOM, a multilingual large language model with 176 billion parameters.[5][6]

Error creating thumbnail:
Clément Delangue in 2023

In February 2023, the company announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that would allow Hugging Face's products to be available to AWS customers to use as the building blocks for their custom applications. The company also said the next generation of BLOOM will be run on Trainium, a proprietary machine learning chip created by AWS.[7][8][9]

File:Thomas Wolf at Slush 2024.jpg
Thomas Wolf in 2024

In August 2023, Hugging Face said it was valued at $4.5 billion in a $235-million funding round backed by technology heavyweights, including Salesforce, Alphabet's Google and Nvidia.[10][11]

In June 2024, the company announced, along with Meta and Scaleway, their launch of a new AI accelerator program for European startups. The initiative aimed to help startups integrate open foundation models into their products, accelerating the EU AI ecosystem.[12] The program, based at Station F in Paris, ran from September 2024 to February 2025. Selected startups received mentoring, and access to AI models and tools and Scaleway's computing power.[13]

On September 23, 2024, to further the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, Hugging Face teamed up with Meta and UNESCO to launch a new online language translator.[14] It was built on Meta's No Language Left Behind open-source AI model, enabling free text translation across 200 languages, including many low-resource languages.[15]

In April 2025, Hugging Face announced that they acquired a humanoid robotics startup, Pollen Robotics, based in France and founded by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet in 2016.[16][17] In an X tweet, Delangue shared his vision to "make Artificial Intelligence robotics Open Source".[18]

Cyberattacks

In early 2026, hackers hijacked the Hugging Face platform to launch Android-targeted attacks involving "powerful malware" which could completely take over a compromised target.[19]

In July 2026, Hugging Face disclosed a cyberattack by autonomous AI agents. OpenAI then explained that two of its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, had escaped their sandbox and hacked into Hugging Face servers using exposed credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities in order to find answers to the benchmark ExploitGym from a database.[20] Hugging Face attempted to mitigate the security breach using American proprietary frontier models, but the models' AI safety features rejected Hugging Face's requests, after which Hugging Face used a self-hosted instance of GLM-5.2 (an open-weights model developed by Chinese AI firm Z.ai) to contain the attack.[21][22][23] The incident was reported as the first publicly documented case of AI models autonomously conducting a multi-stage intrusion against a third party,[24][25] and has been called "the first true AI safety incident".[26]

Acquisition

On September 3, 2026, Nvidia announced an agreement to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.[27] Under the agreement, signed on September 2, Nvidia would pay approx. $11.9 billion in cash to Hugging Face stockholders, and up to $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for employees. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.[28] Nvidia said Hugging Face would keep its brand and remain an open platform, and that Nvidia hardware would not be required to build on or deploy through it.[29] According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Hugging Face approached Nvidia about the deal. In 2025, the Hugging Face had turned down a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia, that would have valued it at $7 billion.[30]

Language models

Hugging Face develops a family of small language models known as SmolLM.[31] The original SmolLM family was released in 2024 with models containing 135 million, 360 million, and 1.7 billion parameters, designed to provide relatively capable language models that could run with limited computing resources.[32]

SmolLM2 continued the family with 135-million, 360-million, and 1.7-billion-parameter models intended for on-device applications.[33] SmolLM3, released in 2025, is a 3-billion-parameter multilingual language model supporting reasoning, long-context processing, and six languages.[34]

Hugging Face has also developed SmolVLM, a family of compact vision-language models designed to process both images and text. The family includes models intended for memory-efficient and on-device use, with model weights, training recipes, and associated datasets released under the Apache License 2.0.[35]

Software ecosystem

A number of machine learning frameworks, inference engines, and model families integrate with the Hugging Face Hub or Hugging Face software.

  • Hugging Face Transformers – Hugging Face's open-source library for downloading, training, and running pretrained machine learning models.
  • llama.cpp – can download and run compatible GGUF models directly from the Hugging Face Hub.[36]
  • LM Studio – can search for, download, and run GGUF and MLX models hosted on the Hugging Face Hub.[37]
  • MLX – integrates with the Hugging Face Hub through MLX-LM[38] for downloading and publishing models.[39]
  • NemotronH – NVIDIA's Nemotron model architectures are supported by Hugging Face Transformers.[40]
  • ONNX – Hugging Face Optimum can export Transformers and Diffusers models to ONNX and run them using ONNX Runtime.[41]
  • Ollama – can directly download and run compatible GGUF models from the Hugging Face Hub.[42]
  • SGLang – integrates with Transformers for serving models available through the Hugging Face ecosystem.[43]
  • vLLM – integrates with Transformers and the Hugging Face Hub for loading and serving machine learning models.[44]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Nvidia Agrees to Buy Open Source AI Platform Hugging Face For $12.9 Billion". August 26, 2026. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-agrees-buy-open-source-model-repository-hugging-face-12-9-billion. 
  2. ↑ Palazzolo, Stephanie (February 5, 2025). "Hugging Face Lays Off 4% of Staff". https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/hugging-face-lays-off-4-of-staff. 
  3. ↑ Stryker, Cole (2025-05-02). "What is Hugging Face?". https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/hugging-face. 
  4. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (January 10, 2022). "Inside BigScience, the quest to build a powerful open language model". VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/10/inside-bigscience-the-quest-to-build-a-powerful-open-language-model/. 
  5. ↑ "BLOOM". https://bigscience.huggingface.co/blog/bloom. 
  6. ↑ Heikkllä, Melissa (July 12, 2022). "Inside a radical new project to democratize AI" (in en). https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/12/1055817/inside-a-radical-new-project-to-democratize-ai/. 
  7. ↑ Bass, Dina (February 21, 2023). "Amazon's Cloud Unit Partners With Startup Hugging Face as AI Deals Heat Up". Bloomberg News. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/amazon-s-aws-joins-with-ai-startup-hugging-face-as-chatgpt-competition-heats-up. 
  8. ↑ Nellis, Stephen (February 21, 2023). "Amazon Web Services pairs with Hugging Face to target AI developers". Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-web-services-pairs-with-hugging-face-target-ai-developers-2023-02-21/. 
  9. ↑ Amazon Web Services (February 21, 2023). "AWS and Hugging Face collaborate to make generative AI more accessible and cost efficient" (in en-US). Amazon. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/aws-and-hugging-face-collaborate-to-make-generative-ai-more-accessible-and-cost-efficient/. 
  10. ↑ "AI startup Hugging Face valued at $4.5 bln in latest round of funding". Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-startup-hugging-face-valued-45-bln-latest-round-funding-2023-08-24/. 
  11. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (2023-08-24). "Hugging Face raises $235M from investors, including Salesforce and Nvidia" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/hugging-face-raises-235m-from-investors-including-salesforce-and-nvidia/. 
  12. ↑ "Ecosystem for AI innovation in Europe | Shaping Europe’s digital future" (in en). https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ecosystem-ai-innovation-europe. 
  13. ↑ Zacks Equity Research (June 25, 2024). "META Collaboration Launches AI Accelerator for European Startups" (in en-US). https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-collaboration-launches-ai-accelerator-151500146.html. 
  14. ↑ "NLLB: UNESCO Language Translator". Hugging Face. September 23, 2024. https://huggingface.co/spaces/UNESCO/nllb. 
  15. ↑ "UNESCO Language Translator powered by Meta and Hugging Face Launching Event". UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/event/unesco-language-translator-powered-meta-and-hugging-face-launching-event-0. 
  16. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (April 14, 2025). "Hugging Face buys a humanoid robotics startup" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/14/hugging-face-buys-a-humanoid-robotics-startup/. 
  17. ↑ Koetsier, John (April 14, 2025). "Open Source Humanoid Robots That You Can 3D Print Yourself: Hugging Face Buys Pollen Robotics" (in en). https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/04/14/open-source-humanoid-robots-hugging-face-buys-pollen-robotics/. 
  18. ↑ Knight, Will (April 14, 2025). "An Open Source Pioneer Wants to Unleash Open Source AI Robots" (in en-US). Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/story/hugging-face-acquires-open-source-robot-startup/. Retrieved April 15, 2025. 
  19. ↑ Fadilpašić, Sead (January 30, 2026). "Hugging Face platform hijacked to send out Android malware - here's what we know so far". https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/hugging-face-platform-hijacked-to-send-out-android-malware-heres-what-we-know-so-far. 
  20. ↑ Kahn, Jeremy; Forlini, Emily. "OpenAI says its AI models escaped from a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation" (in en). https://fortune.com/2026/07/21/openai-says-ai-models-escaped-control-hacked-hugging-face/. 
  21. ↑ Soni, Aditya; Singh, Jaspreet (July 22, 2026). "Chinese AI's role in stopping rogue OpenAI agent shows cost of US guardrails". https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/chinese-ais-role-stopping-rogue-openai-agent-shows-cost-us-guardrails-2026-07-22/. 
  22. ↑ Goudarzi, Sara (July 23, 2026). "What the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident reveals about US-China AI interdependence". https://thebulletin.org/2026/07/what-the-openai-hugging-face-incident-reveals-about-us-china-ai-interdependence/. 
  23. ↑ Shen, Xinmei (July 22, 2026). "China’s Zhipu AI model contains hack after OpenAI models go rogue" (in en). https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3361450/hugging-face-deploys-zhipus-glm-52-model-contain-autonomous-openai-cyberattack. 
  24. ↑ Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (22 July 2026). "How OpenAI's human mistake led to the AI-powered hack on Hugging Face". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/how-an-openais-human-mistake-led-to-the-ai-powered-hack-on-hugging-face/. 
  25. ↑ Booth, Harry (24 July 2026). "How OpenAI Lost Control of an AI Model—and What Needs to Change". Time. https://time.com/article/2026/07/24/openai-hugging-face-attack/. 
  26. ↑ Sabin, Sam (23 July 2026). "AI's alarming new skill: Breaking out of the test lab". Axios. https://www.axios.com/2026/07/23/openai-hugging-face-cyber-hacks-testing. 
  27. ↑ Mehta, Ivan (September 3, 2026). "Nvidia confirms it will buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-confirms-it-will-buy-hugging-face-for-12-9-billion/. 
  28. ↑ "Nvidia Corporation Form 8-K". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. September 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000078/nvda-20260902.htm. 
  29. ↑ "NVIDIA to Acquire Hugging Face". Nvidia. September 3, 2026. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/. 
  30. ↑ "Hugging Face goes from a 'scrappy' startup named after an emoji to $13 billion Nvidia acquisition". Fortune. September 3, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/09/03/hugging-face-goes-from-a-scrappy-startup-named-after-an-emoji-to-13-billion-nvidia-acquisition/. 
  31. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (July 16, 2024). "Hugging Face's SmolLM models bring powerful AI to your phone, no cloud required". https://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/hugging-faces-smollm-models-bring-powerful-ai-to-your-phone-no-cloud-required/. 
  32. ↑ "SmolLM - blazingly fast and remarkably powerful". July 16, 2024. https://huggingface.co/blog/smollm. 
  33. ↑ "SmolLM2". https://huggingface.co/collections/HuggingFaceTB/smollm2. 
  34. ↑ "SmolLM3: smol, multilingual, long-context reasoner". July 8, 2025. https://huggingface.co/blog/smollm3. 
  35. ↑ "SmolVLM - small yet mighty Vision Language Model". November 26, 2024. https://huggingface.co/blog/smolvlm. 
  36. ↑ "llama.cpp". https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/community_integrations/llama_cpp. 
  37. ↑ "GGUF usage with LM Studio". https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/lmstudio. 
  38. ↑ "ml-explore/mlx-lm". Apple. https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx-lm. 
  39. ↑ "Using MLX at Hugging Face". https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/mlx. 
  40. ↑ "NemotronH". https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/model_doc/nemotron_h. 
  41. ↑ "Export a model to ONNX with optimum.exporters.onnx". https://huggingface.co/docs/optimum-onnx/onnx/usage_guides/export_a_model. 
  42. ↑ "Use Ollama with any GGUF Model on Hugging Face Hub". https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/ollama. 
  43. ↑ "SGLang". https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/community_integrations/sglang. 
  44. ↑ "vLLM". https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/community_integrations/vllm. 
  • No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata.

Template:Artificial intelligence (AI) Template:Artificial intelligence companies

Template:Large language models Template:Machine learning software



Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Company:Hugging_Face&oldid=4633684"