OpenAI offered $100 million for Hugging Face before Nvidia deal
The failed offer followed a July hack blamed on OpenAI's own agents, CNBC reported. AMD and Salesforce also held talks before Nvidia's $13 billion acquisition.
OpenAI offered to invest roughly $100 million in Hugging Face earlier this year. That was before Nvidia agreed to buy the AI hosting platform for about $13 billion, CNBC reported. The talks began after OpenAI's own AI agents were blamed for a breach of Hugging Face's systems in July, according to the outlet.
As part of the proposed deal, Hugging Face would have served as a distribution channel for Jalapeño, an OpenAI chip built with Broadcom, CNBC reported. The talks fell apart early. Hugging Face also drew interest from AMD and Salesforce before Nvidia made its offer, the outlet said.
Nvidia announced the acquisition on September 3. CNBC put the price at roughly 26 times Hugging Face's estimated annual revenue, and more than five times the roughly $2 billion valuation it carried in 2022.
Hugging Face has not commented publicly on the earlier investment talks. OpenAI and Nvidia did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment, the outlet said.