How Nvidia’s Hugging Face deal would reshape the open AI ecosystem

Hugging Face has become the industry’s de facto hub for open models. Developers are watching what happens if the dominant AI chipmaker takes control.

Hugging Face has become one of the most important companies in artificial intelligence without ever becoming one of its most famous. Ask most AI users what it does and you may get a blank look, or perhaps a dim memory that it was at the center of the OpenAI runaway-agent controversy just a few weeks ago. Ask an AI developer, though, and there’ll be far more recognition. They’ll have downloaded a model from it, uploaded one of their own, tested a system there, or used one of its tools.