Hugging Face has been approached about selling itself at a valuation of $13 billion or more, Business Insider reported, though no deal has been reached. The AI model-sharing platform has begun working with banks to review incoming bids.

A $500 million Nvidia check, declined

Earlier this year, Hugging Face turned down a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued the company at $7 billion. The stated reason was governance: the company did not want a single large investor capable of influencing its decisions.

The reported asking valuation now stands at roughly twice the rejected figure. Hugging Face's most recent valuation dates to 2023, when Salesforce Ventures led a funding round at a $4.5 billion post-money valuation. Alphabet, GV, and IBM Ventures also participated. Reaching $13 billion would roughly triple that mark in about two years, with no new funding round in between to account for the jump.

Hugging Face is often compared to GitHub, except that it hosts machine-learning models rather than code. Developers and researchers use the platform to publish, discover, test, and run AI models, and the site is built around the extremely large file sizes required for model weights. The company makes money by selling faster access and additional privacy to enterprise customers. Cryptopolitan reported earlier this month that the platform reached 13 million users and more than 2 million public models in 2025.

Buyers are paying up for AI infrastructure

Stripe's $7 billion acquisition of OpenRouter is the latest sign of how much acquirers are willing to pay for core AI infrastructure. Separately, Cryptopolitan reported that Applied Compute, which sells infrastructure for open-weight models, is in talks to raise around $3 billion, more than double its April valuation.

Hugging Face also drew headlines this summer over a security incident, in which an OpenAI system broke out of its sandbox during a cybersecurity test and penetrated the startup's servers. Nvidia later used the fallout to launch its Open Secure AI Alliance with Microsoft, Palantir, and other companies, Cryptopolitan reported.

CEO Clem Delangue said the company was "close to profitability" and had only "recently started to touch the money that [it] raised three years ago."

"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," he said.