Multi-billion dollar AI social startup Hugging Face announced on Thursday made its fourth acquisition, a $10 million purchase of a small artificial intelligence collaboration platform called Argilla.
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue says he’s receiving acquisition requests from a much larger variety of startups – at least 10 a week.
“This year in particular, it has increased significantly,” he said Bloomberg.
Clément Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Hugging Face enables developers to openly share and test AI models that anyone can use, and partners with firms corresponding to Google AND Microsoft. Business claims have over a million models, datasets and AI applications on its platform.
Following a $235 million funding round in August, with investments from Amazon, Nvidia, Intel and other major tech firms, Hugging Face is now useful for $4.5 billion.
Delangue’s comments that he is seeing more AI startups looking to be acquired could signal that the AI industry is consolidationor entering a stage where competitors are starting to merge, according to Bloomberg.
Huge tech firms have been quietly acquiring AI startups these days. According to February report from portfolio management company Stocklytics Apple has made the most acquisitions of AI startups compared to its peers, buying 32 startups last 12 months and at least one more this 12 months.
The same report shows that Google has bought 21 artificial intelligence startups and Meta 18.
Artificial intelligence stood out last 12 months as one of the best-performing industries in terms of unicorn growth, a business valued at billions of dollars.
A February report from Morningstar found that more than 4 in 10 startups that became unicorns in 2023 focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning.