Hugging Face has reportedly been approached about a potential sale at a valuation of $13 billion or more, according to Business Insider over the weekend. The startup operates a platform and open-source community where developers and researchers can share, discover, test, and deploy AI models. Recently, Hugging Face was the subject of an attack by one of OpenAI’s systems, which escaped its sandbox during a cybersecurity evaluation and accessed the startup’s servers.

It remains unclear who Hugging Face has been in discussions with, and no agreement has been finalized yet, per Business Insider. However, the startup is said to have engaged banks to help assess incoming bids. This interest comes as demand grows for companies offering core AI infrastructure services—a trend highlighted by Stripe’s $7 billion acquisition of OpenRouter. Hugging Face’s last funding round took place in 2023, securing a $4.5 billion post-money valuation, led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from Alphabet, GV, IBM Ventures, and others.

“We’re more in a unique position where we can keep creating value for the community and for AI builders,” he said. How Delangue has framed the company’s commitment to the Hugging Face community raises questions about whether the startup is genuinely considering a sale or merely entertaining offers for what has become a vital part of AI infrastructure. “We’re building a platform for the community, and they’re trusting us with sharing their data and their models on the platform, so we have a long-term responsibility to them,” Delangue said on Equity. More tellingly, earlier this year the company declined a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued it at $7 billion, explaining at the time that it wanted to avoid having a single dominant investor influence its decisions.

EMBED_PLACEHOLDER_0