Jeff Boudier, head of monetization at Hugging Face, is guiding the AI startup towards profitability while maintaining its open-source ethos. Based in New York City, Hugging Face has not pursued venture capital in over two years, choosing to adopt a contrarian approach to Silicon Valley’s fundraising frenzy. Founded by French entrepreneurs a decade ago, Hugging Face originally focused on chatbot development but has evolved into a platform featuring 2.5 million models and 700,000 datasets, emphasizing accessibility.
The company operates on a “freemium” model, where a small percentage of users pay for premium services. Notably, Hugging Face has experimented with robotics, recently launching the Reachy Mini robot, which has seen encouraging sales. Boudier firmly believes in avoiding in-app advertising to preserve user trust, a stance that differentiates Hugging Face in an increasingly competitive AI landscape. The company’s focus remains on sustainable growth and innovation within AI and robotics.
Source link
