Recently, the well-known AI development platformHugging FaceAcquisition announcedXetHub, founded by former Apple engineersData storageand collaborative startups. This move will undoubtedly bring more convenience to AI developers and accelerate the democratization of artificial intelligence!
XetHub's story began in 2021, when it was co-founded by former Apple engineers Yucheng Low, Rajat Arya, and Ajit Banerjee. This dynamic team quickly gained industry recognition with the vision of simplifying the process of building machine learning and AI applications. Last year, they raised $7.5 million in funding from Madrona Ventures, laying the foundation for the company's rapid development.
Yucheng Low, CEO of XetHub, enthused on LinkedIn: “Our shared vision is to democratize AI and enable everyone to host, share, and build models and datasets. At Hugging Face, we will continue to pursue this vision by integrating our technology into Hugging Face Hub to create the future of AI collaboration.”
As the protagonist of this acquisition, New York-based Hugging Face has established a strong influence in the field of AI development. The development tools they provide help many companies test, store and run large-scale AI models that require a lot of computing and storage capabilities. Just one year ago, Hugging Face raised $235 million in Series D financing, showing investors' confidence in its development prospects. In June of this year, they acquired another development tool startup called Argilla for $10 million, further expanding their technical strength.
Although Hugging Face did not disclose the specific amount of the acquisition, they emphasized that this is the company's largest acquisition to date. This acquisition is not only a technology integration, but also a gathering of talents. XetHub's 14 employees will join the Hugging Face team and inject new innovative power into the company.
This acquisition is not an isolated case, but reflects the overall trend of the current AI industry. As the AI craze continues to heat up, we see more and more small AI startups and their executives being acquired by large companies. This not only reflects the huge data storage and computing needs brought about by the development of artificial intelligence, but also indicates that the trend of industry consolidation is accelerating.
As XetHub co-founder Rajat Arya said: "So far, this AI capability has been limited to large companies, but we will increasingly see every business adopting AI." With the powerful combination of Hugging Face and XetHub, we have reason to believe that AI development will become more convenient and the democratization of artificial intelligence will be further accelerated.