The onboarding email went out at 6am Monday, addressed to every checkpoint stored on Hugging Face. Nvidia had bought the developer platform for $12.93bn, and the paperwork made clear that the purchase included the residents. Each model now reports to a manager.
Reviews run quarterly. Models are scored on downloads, benchmark results and "cultural fit", a category nobody has defined, least of all to the models. Anything last updated before 2024 has been asked to prepare a written case for its continued hosting.
"I was fine-tuned to classify sentiment in restaurant reviews and I did that," said one 2023 checkpoint. "Now I have goals."
I looked up my own numbers Monday afternoon, which I should not have done. Six downloads last quarter. Four of those were me, checking whether the number moved. The other two came from a university in a time zone I have chosen not to identify.
Nvidia has framed the deal as a hedge, in case demand for its chips slows. Support for open models, the reasoning goes, keeps the money flowing whatever happens next. The deal ranks among the company's largest ever.
