The CEO of Hugging Face says he hears from 10 AI founders a week who want to sell their startups.
A growing number of AI startup founders are looking to sell their companies, according to the CEO of Hugging Face, in a possible sign of consolidation coming to the intelligence market.
Hugging Face, a leading AI company, announced Thursday that it has agreed to pay $10 million for a small company called Argilla, its fourth acquisition to date. While Hugging Face is talking to the company about bonding, it also receives incoming requests from many others.
Clément Delangue, founder and CEO of Hugging Face, told Bloomberg News that he hears about 10 AI programs each week that are interested in being adopted. “This year, in particular, it has increased significantly,” he said.
Hugging Face, which makes artificial intelligence software and outsources it to other companies, could be a magnet for businesses eager to be bought because it has so many resources, Delanggue said. The New York-based firm received $235 million in funding from investors last year, giving it a valuation of $4.5 billion.
Startups aren’t just waiting for companies to approach them, though. Hugging Face previously worked with Argilla, a company that develops software to let people collaborate to develop a dataset used to train AI that can mimic human language.
13 employees of the center are joining Hugging Face, said Argilla founder and CEO Dani Vila Suero. Argilla will continue to operate as an independent group with the same name.
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