Open-weight AI companies are the Valley's hottest acquisition targets | TechCrunch

Nvidia plans to acquire the open-source weight AI platform Hugging Face for $13 billion, and this deal is considered one of the most notable in recent tech mergers and acquisitions. Previously, Nvidia had reached an agreement with Poolside for $6 billion, and two weeks ago, Stripe acquired OpenRouter, a major provider of similar services, for over $7 billion. Nvidia’s move aims to reduce its dependence on large-scale computing platforms and cutting-edge laboratories, as well as to gain market share with its own chips (such as OpenAI’s Jalapeño). Although Ramp surveys show that only 6% of companies use open-source weight models, and Jellyfish data indicates that software engineers account for only 2%, Stripe believes that controlling scarce computing resources is crucial for reducing inference costs. Currently, companies are actively seeking to integrate open-source weight AI-related resources through acquisitions.