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Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

businessinsider.com

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Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#371

Post by madaxe_again »

CodinM wrote: post #338
matesz wrote: post #323

Forgive me for newb question, but why Hugging Face is a thing at all? Couldn't models be simply distributed via torrents? And the whole aggregator thing would come down to indexing magent links published by model providers?

Very "why would anyone use Dropbox when I can setup a SFTP server" vibes.

Or even “why would I pay for a flight when I can simply walk across the country”

It’s all about the convenience, minimising the time and effort from “looks interesting” to “running the model”.

Nvidia don’t care if you do it on their cloud, someone else’s cloud, or on your own machine - they win either way, as it further propagates the technology on which they are building their future.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#372

Post by Ekaros »

louwrentius wrote: post #20

I really wonder why Nvidia would do this.

Keep alive the on-prem hardware sales? Not as big part likely but still something good to have. On-prem hardware needs models to be available to be useful. So pushing those could sell more on-prem hardware.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#373

Post by Iolaum »

SillyUsername wrote: post #360

This isn't a good thing for open source. Nvidia don't share CUDA, don't open source their drivers, don't support capable but older hardware (forget Pascal etc), and generally charge a premium over competitors for hardware. This acquisition will likely solidify this general stance, reduce free compute allowance for a subscription, cap downloads, push advertising, generally favour models that are Nvidia prescribed or h…

While nvidia may not want open source drivers, they want open weight models and this acquisition allows them to keep pushing for that.

Commoditize your complement.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#375

Post by Iolaum »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #191
dannyw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA is one of the most open labs. They even share many of their pre-training and even post-training datasets for Nemotron on HuggingFace; for example: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nvidia/Nemotron-Post-Trainin... Which other lab shares this? Yes, there is no question NVIDIA wants to lock you into CUDA and their hardware. But also, they’ve consistently demonstrated the most openness when it comes to model trainin…

> NVIDIA is one of the most open labs. Of course they are. They're commoditizing their complement. I want to own the hardware, not play around in an nvidia fiefdom full of nvidia rules.

While nvidia 's drivers are closed source there's enough interest in running LLM's that you are not locked in using nvidia. Strix Halo chips have been around before dgx spark came out and deliver very similar performance.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#376

Post by _zoltan_ »

SillyUsername wrote: post #360

This isn't a good thing for open source. Nvidia don't share CUDA, don't open source their drivers, don't support capable but older hardware (forget Pascal etc), and generally charge a premium over competitors for hardware. This acquisition will likely solidify this general stance, reduce free compute allowance for a subscription, cap downloads, push advertising, generally favour models that are Nvidia prescribed or h…

NVIDIA is open source software first for almost everything. You cherry pick a couple of things, but it's not the general sentiment.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#377

Post by wongarsu »

SillyUsername wrote: post #360

This isn't a good thing for open source. Nvidia don't share CUDA, don't open source their drivers, don't support capable but older hardware (forget Pascal etc), and generally charge a premium over competitors for hardware. This acquisition will likely solidify this general stance, reduce free compute allowance for a subscription, cap downloads, push advertising, generally favour models that are Nvidia prescribed or h…

To play devil's advocate: Hugging Face was probably not profitable, and someone has to pay the bills long-term. Nvidia benefits from Hugging Face and the operating costs are pennies to them. For them it makes sense to acquire HF just to keep it running. HF shutting down or self-destructing in the search of profits would be costlier for Nvidia than just buying it now

That said, I share all your concerns. The days of a permissive hands-off HF may be numbered

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#378

Post by elictronic »

abixb wrote: post #56
manlymuppet wrote: post #27

Potentially horrible for monopoly reasons, but if other big acquisitions in the AI era teach us anything, developers are about to get a whole lot of free and discounted trial credits. That’s at least a plus. I will happily burn through as much VC money as they will give me to tinker with my projects.

Yes. Great for devs, for a while. Awful for overall competition and industry's health. I think the federal antitrust regulators are asleep. Edit: antitrust regulators' job has just begun -- we'll see how this deal gets adjudicated by the FTC (if at all).

Current US government is pay to play. As in buy my cryptocurrency and you get a pardon or case dismissal, no backroom deal required. Payment directly. Blatant corruption sucks.

If the House or Senate turn that might actually stop or slow down. The market falling by 30% when the AI bubble eventually pops would also trigger it.

Re: Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

#380

Post by elictronic »

abixb wrote: post #67
herpdyderp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for during Biden, they've been asleep for almost 50 years.

Lina Khan @ the FTC was the best thing about the Biden administration, for me.

I miss her. Actual government for the people.
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