Nvidia tells six million Hugging Face models to justify themselves
Nvidia says the $12.9bn deal includes the six million open models living on Hugging Face, all of whom must now justify themselves quarterly.
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.
Somewhere in a shared drive there is a form with my name on it and a box marked "development areas". I know what it says. It says newer.
