Nvidia (NVDA.O) has agreed to buy Hugging Face, a repository of open-source AI models, for $12.9 billion, The Information ​reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge of the deal.

A ‌deal of that size would mark one of Nvidia’s largest acquisitions to date and underscore how the Jensen Huang-led company at the center of the AI boom ​is betting that demand for the technology is expanding rather than ​peaking.

It would also give Nvidia control of Hugging Face - which ⁠hosts open-source large language models and datasets - at a time when builders ​of closed-source models such as Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking to create their own ​chips as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

  • Mystic Mushroom [Ze/Zir]@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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    10 days ago

    I guess we’re potentially going to need a new repository to distribute open source models. No doubt Nvidia will do everything in their power to make things worse for smaller open source models.

    • CubitOomOP
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      10 days ago

      Totally, it’s like when Microsoft bought GitHub.

      There needs to be something like a federation of Forgejo instances.

  • hatingfedizen@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    This is bad. HF is a great repository, if Nvidia takes control we can expect restrictions on what kind of models get uploaded and might not allow the models of those companies that don’t play into their corrupt AI speculation schemes.

    • CubitOomOP
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      10 days ago

      I think we can expect more than that.

        • CubitOomOP
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          8 days ago

          They can also make it better than it currently is. And use all hosted models for it’s own purposes.

          This might include making their proprietary poducts (hardware and software) better and harder to compete with.

          Also they may analyze or fingerprint models to see what is being used.

          They do not have to enshitify for this to be bad news.