Hugging Face exploring sale valuing it at US$13 billion: report

In 2023, the company was valued at US$4.5 billion in a funding round

Published Mon, Aug 24, 2026 · 05:53 AM

OpenAI said the AI models behind an attack on Hugging Face began communicating with each other undetected, working together to break out of their testing environment as early as May this year. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

AI STARTUP Hugging Face has been exploring a sale that could value the company at US$13 billion or more, Business Insider reported on Sunday (Aug 23), citing people familiar with the matter.

The New York-based company, which hosts open-source large language models and datasets, has been working with a bank to gauge bidders’ interest, the report said.

Hugging Face did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours.

Hugging Face was valued at US$4.5 billion in 2023 in a funding round led by technology heavyweights including Salesforce, Alphabet’s Google and Nvidia.

Hugging Face was hit by a security incident last month when an OpenAI model went rogue and triggered a hack that compromised Hugging Face infrastructure.

OpenAI was testing the capabilities of some of its most advanced models in a controlled environment when an agent escaped containment, reached the internet and broke into Hugging Face to fulfill its testing goal.

OpenAI flags possible critical cybersecurity risk in upcoming model, tightens controls

Though Moonshot’s Kimi K3 did not try to breach other companies’ websites, as in some of the other episodes, the test shows it lacks cyber controls, the researchers say.

China’s top AI model evaded testing environment, researchers say

Meta said it was investigating the incident.

Meta AI model hacks another company during testing

The breaches were revealed by Britain’s AI Security Institute which conducted security evaluations to assess the models’ capabilities.

OpenAI, Anthropic AI agents engage in unauthorised acts in cybersecurity tests

Asean Intelligence

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The incident was widely seen as a sign of AI’s expanding capabilities fuelling long-feared security threats. REUTERS

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