Key highlights:

  • Hugging Face is reportedly open to acquisition bids, valuing the AI company at $13 billion
  • The firm’s annualized income has surged 50% in under two months to $150 million
  • The move comes after a major hacking incident involving a rogue AI model from OpenAI

AI startup Hugging Face is reportedly considering offers for a sale that would value the company at around $13 billion. The move comes after an OpenAI cybersecurity model hacked Hugging Face, sparking grave concerns over the speed of frontier AI development.

Hugging Face is open to a $13 billion sale

According to a Business Insider report, Hugging Face has received acquisition offers valuing the AI platform at $13 billion. While sources are still under wraps, the report noted that Hugging Face is weighing the offers and has opened discussions with US banks to evaluate the bids.

However, the entities making the bid and the deal size are unknown. Back in 2023, Hugging Face raised $235 million at a $4.5 billion post-money valuation in a round led by Salesforce Ventures.

Often called the GitHub for AI, Hugging Face hosts hundreds of thousands of pre-trained open-source AI models for image and audio tasks. The platform provides access to data used for training and evaluating machine learning models, while allowing users to build and test AI applications in a web browser.

As of the latest data from the company’s Spring Report, Hugging Face has reached 13 million users, with independent developers accounting for a majority of platform downloads. Furthermore, Hugging Face’s annualized revenue run rate has topped $150 million, representing an explosive 50% revenue from June 2026.

Meanwhile, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue noted that the company is close to profitability, adding that it has barely touched the funds from its 2023 raise. Delangue’s comments doused speculation of a near-term sale, with the company famously turning down a $500 million investment from Nvidia in early 2026.

“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,” said Delangue.

OpenAI incident could affect negotiations

Reports of Hugging Face exploring a potential sale come right on the heels of a security incident involving OpenAI. OpenAI’s unreleased research model managed to find a vulnerability in Hugging Face infrastructure to obtain answers for cybersecurity challenges in an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

Source: Hugging Face

While OpenAI has shut down the model, analysts say potential buyers could lean on the incident to argue that Hugging Face has security and infrastructure vulnerabilities. Furthermore, enterprise customers could become more concerned about hosting sensitive models and data, leading to a lower valuation or stronger indemnities.

Others say the incident can strengthen the strategic value of Hugging Face, pointing to its position at the center of the AI ecosystem. Advanced AI systems are interacting with its models, repositories, and infrastructure since the platform has become a major distribution layer for AI development.

Meanwhile, AI interest among VC funds has reached an all-time high, accentuated by reports of OpenAI and Anthropic going public.