The valuation of Hugging Face has benefited from the AI boom that commenced when Microsoft-backed OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot.

New York-based AI startup Hugging Face has secured a significant investment of $235 million in a funding round, driving its valuation to $4.5 billion. Notable contributions came from major tech players such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Salesforce (NASDAQ: CRM), AMD (NASDAQ: AMD), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) , IBM (NYSE: IBM), and Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM). The company’s focus is on creating tools for AI developers to openly share and test their work, akin to GitHub’s role in the programming realm.

Hugging Face’s platform enables AI developers to collaborate by sharing code, models, and datasets, while also providing developer tools to streamline the implementation of open-source AI models. The company’s approach differs from other AI startups that guard their technology as trade secrets, instead offering accessibility and collaboration. Its services encompass a wide range of AI models, including those generating text, music, images, language translation, and object recognition within images. (CNBC)

The startup’s name originates from an emoji, the hugging face – a smiley face embraced by two open hands. Initially starting as an iPhone chatbot app, Hugging Face transitioned its focus to AI development tools after observing the growing interest from AI developers. The funding injection will be directed towards hiring talent to remain competitive in the expanding artificial intelligence sector.

The investment underlines the increasing popularity of collaborative AI development and the growing role of shared platforms in advancing AI technologies. Hugging Face aims to serve an expanding community of AI developers and builders, potentially numbering in the millions within the next few years. The endorsement of the platform by major tech companies stems from the active usage of Hugging Face by their own employees.

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