Hugging Face Launches HUGS: A New Open-Source AI Offering to Reduce Costs and Complexity

Hugging Face teams up with Big Tech on open-source offering

The start-up wants to accelerate AI app development using open models with 'with zero configuration required'. AI start-up Hugging Face has teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others to launch its new open model offering to developers. The New York-based company, which has been riding the AI wave, is on a mission to "democratise good machine learning". Its latest offering, entitled 'HUGS', is optimised to run open large language models (LLMs) on a variety of hardware accelerators. In a blogpost, the team said HUGS requires zero configuration set-up. "One key challenge developers and organisations face is the engineering complexity of optimising inference workloads for LLMs on a particular GPU or AI accelerator," it said. "With HUGS, we enable maximum throughput deployments for the most popular open LLMs with zero configuration required. Each deployment configuration offered by HUGS is fully tested and maintained to work out of the box." Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has built a platform where members of the machine learning community can collaborate and host their AI models and code, in a similar style to GitHub. The start-up hosts various tools to support developers, along with subscription options with extra features for enterprises. While it's far from new, the open-source AI platform has garnered significant attention in recent years from the biggest names in the industry as the generative AI wave swelled. In February 2023, AWS teamed up with the start-up to make generative AI more accessible and cost-efficient. Later that same year, multiple tech giants including Nvidia, Salesforce, Google and Amazon participated in a major funding round, giving the machine learning company $235m and putting its valuation at $4.5bn. Among the models on its platform is a large geospatial foundation model from IBM and NASA, which is available to the public and aims to provide an easier and faster way for researchers to analyse and draw insights from large geospatial datasets. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Startup Hugging Face aims to cut AI costs with open source offering

Oct 23 (Reuters) - Hugging Face on Wednesday said it is releasing a new open-source software offering with Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google and others aimed at lowering the costs for building chatbots and other AI systems. New York-based startup Hugging Face has become a central place where AI software developers share code with one another and is valued at $4.5 billion. It is a key distribution point for open-source AI technologies such as Meta Platforms' (META.O), opens new tab Llama. Advertisement · Scroll to continue But translating those open-source AI models into a working chatbot that runs on chips from Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab takes a lot of additional work, and Hugging Face on Wednesday released a paid offering called HUGS, short for Hugging Face for Generative AI Services, that takes care of that work automatically. Hugging Face will offer the product through Amazon and Google's cloud computing services for $1 per hour and on Digital Ocean, a specialty cloud computing company. Companies will also be able to download the Hugging Face offering to run in their own data centers. Advertisement · Scroll to continue The offering's primary competition is the commercial services offered by companies such as OpenAI and Google-backed Anthropic AI. Jeff Boudier, head of product and growth at Hugging Face, said the offering is meant to help companies get control of both the costs of their AI efforts and keep their data private, which is a major concern in industries such as finance and healthcare with strict rules around customer data. "We're living in this anomaly where the norm has been to outsource your AI technology to third parties and black box systems," Boudier told Reuters. "Whereas for as long as we've had tech industry, companies have wanted to build their own technology and understand and control their own technology. What we're trying to do is to make it as easy for a company to build their AI using the best open models available." Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco Editing by Chris Reese Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Startup Hugging Face aims to cut AI costs with open source offering

(Reuters) - Hugging Face on Wednesday said it is releasing a new open-source software offering with Amazon.com, Alphabet's Google and others aimed at lowering the costs for building chatbots and other AI systems. New York-based startup Hugging Face has become a central place where AI software developers share code with one another and is valued at $4.5 billion. It is a key distribution point for open-source AI technologies such as Meta Platforms' Llama. But translating those open-source AI models into a working chatbot that runs on chips from Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices takes a lot of additional work, and Hugging Face on Wednesday released a paid offering called HUGS, short for Hugging Face for Generative AI Services, that takes care of that work automatically. Hugging Face will offer the product through Amazon and Google's cloud computing services for $1 per hour and on Digital Ocean, a specialty cloud computing company. Companies will also be able to download the Hugging Face offering to run in their own data centers. The offering's primary competition is the commercial services offered by companies such as OpenAI and Google-backed Anthropic AI. Jeff Boudier, head of product and growth at Hugging Face, said the offering is meant to help companies get control of both the costs of their AI efforts and keep their data private, which is a major concern in industries such as finance and healthcare with strict rules around customer data. "We're living in this anomaly where the norm has been to outsource your AI technology to third parties and black box systems," Boudier told Reuters. "Whereas for as long as we've had tech industry, companies have wanted to build their own technology and understand and control their own technology. What we're trying to do is to make it as easy for a company to build their AI using the best open models available." (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese)

Startup Hugging Face aims to cut AI costs with open source offering

"We're living in this anomaly where the norm has been to outsource your AI technology to third parties and black box systems," Boudier told Reuters. "Whereas for as long as we've had tech industry, companies have wanted to build their own technology and understand and control their own technology. What we're trying to do is to make it as easy for a company to build their AI using the best open models available."