An increasing number of founders of artificial intelligence startups are looking to sell their companies, which could be a sign of consolidation in the artificial intelligence market, the CEO of Hugging Face said.
Hugging Face, a leading artificial intelligence startup, announced Thursday that it has agreed to pay $10 million to acquire a small company called Argilla, its fourth acquisition to date. While Hugging Face approached the company about a partnership, it also received more requests from more companies.
Clément Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, told Bloomberg News that he hears about 10 AI startups every week expressing interest in being acquired. “Especially this year, there’s been a lot of growth,” he said.
Delangue said Hugging Face, which makes artificial intelligence software and hosts it for other companies, could be attractive to companies eager to be acquired because of its ample resources. The New York-based startup raised $235 million from investors last year, valuing it at $4.5 billion.
The startup isn’t just waiting for other companies to step in, however. Hugging Face has previously partnered with Argilla, a company that develops software that allows people to collaborate on improving datasets used to train artificial intelligence that can mimic human speech.
Argilla co-founder and CEO Dani Vila Suero said the startup’s 13 employees will join Hugging Face. Argilla will continue to operate as an independent team of the same name.
