Nvidia-Backed Open-Source AI Startup Reaches $4.5B Valuation with Tech Titans' Support

Nvidia Corp NVDA backed open-source AI firm Hugging Face raised $235 million at a $4.5 billion valuation from some of technology's biggest companies.

The other backers included Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google, Amazon.Com Inc AMZN, Salesforce, Inc CRM, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc AMD, Intel Corp INTC, International Business Machines Corp IBM and Qualcomm Inc QCOM contributed to the funding round. Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue said the funds will help hire talent to compete in the artificial intelligence space, CNBC reports.

Startups working on AI models saw soaring valuations courtesy of Microsoft Corp MSFT-backed OpenAI's release of its ChatGPT chatbot.

Hugging Face's extensive valuation and crop of prominent backers reflect the effectiveness of a collaborative approach to AI building.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc META intensified the AI rivalry with its open-source Llama large language model.

Other highly valued AI startups, like OpenAI or Cohere, work on the technology directly and charge customers to access them through application programming interfaces or APIs.

Hugging Face is similar in theme and practice to code-repository GitHub (which Microsoft acquired in 2018), where coders worldwide post their projects while working on them.

"AI builders are using Hugging Face all day, every day," Delangue said. He predicted that the number of software developers working with AI models would grow in the coming years.