Nathan Lambert

I never got to comment on Nvidia-HF because I was OOO, but something that struck me is how HuggingFace is a steal for Nvidia. HuggingFace's core ability is understanding how to influence the discussion and direction of AI, relative to their resources. For Nvidia, who is so rich and powerful, this ability is worth easily the ~$10B they paid, but every year. There are many sources of capital other than just hard cash -- HuggingFace is rich in those sources of soft power. It'll be a challenge for Nvidia to keep that culture and to foster it, but that challenge will be valuable growth for the company. Nvidia is a better buyer than one of the three clouds, as the clouds would feel more pressure to make money on it, to compete directly with github, etc. HuggingFace should now be given the directive of Jensens ambition, to be free from having to think of themselves as a "functioning business unit" and to be the most powerful comm's army in the AI discourse of all time. HuggingFace should be free to win the hearts and minds of the next 100 million AI developers, and I'm excited to see it happen. Having worked at HuggingFace, and stared down the barrel of making the company work as an independent public entity, this outcome should've been seen as somewhat inevitable. Congrats again to @Thom_Wolf @julien_c, @ClementDelangue, and all my friends at @huggingface for making something with such incredible value. Much of the culture was about creating value for the whole community, rather than capturing it for HuggingFace. This is now in line with Nvidia's "all-in" bet on open models (so intelligence isn't monopolized), and this next part of the chapter will be fun. My first day of work at HuggingFace, fresh off a red eye in Paris, still feels like yesterday (2022). When I posted the prediction below, last year, I actually got hate for it. lol.