Hugging Face, a leading AI company, has made its largest acquisition to date by acquiring XetHub, a collaborative development platform founded by former Apple researchers. The acquisition will help machine learning teams work more efficiently with large datasets and models. While the exact value of the deal remains undisclosed, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue has stated that this acquisition is significant for the company.
XetHub gained recognition for its platform, which allowed enterprises to explore, understand, and work with large models and datasets. It provided Git-like version control for repositories of up to TBs in size, enabling teams to track changes, collaborate, and maintain reproducibility in their ML workflows. XetHub attracted major customers such as Tableau and Gather AI, thanks to its ability to handle complex scalability needs.
With the acquisition, XetHub’s platform will be integrated into Hugging Face’s existing platform, upgrading its storage and versioning backend. Currently, Hugging Face Hub uses Git LFS as the storage backend, but the company recognized the need for an upgrade due to the growing volume of large files in the AI ecosystem. XetHub’s capabilities will enable Hugging Face Hub to host even larger datasets, models, and files than before.
In addition to enhanced storage, XetHub brings additional features such as content-defined chunking and deduplication. These features allow users to upload only select chunks of new data or models, saving time and improving efficiency. The CTO of Hugging Face, Julien Chaumond, expressed optimism about the potential of this acquisition to unlock new scale in the AI community and enterprise companies.
Currently, the Hugging Face Hub hosts a vast number of models, datasets, and spaces, totaling 12PB in LFS. With the integration of XetHub’s technology, this number is expected to grow even further. However, the timeline for integration and the launch of supporting features has not been disclosed yet.
In conclusion, Hugging Face’s acquisition of XetHub will significantly enhance its platform, allowing machine learning teams to work with larger datasets and models more efficiently. The integration of XetHub’s technology will provide improved storage and versioning capabilities, attracting more users and enabling the AI community to scale to new heights.