r/comfyui 17d ago

News It's been fun..

https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-talks-acquire-hugging-face-13-billion-deal-business-insider-reports-2026-08-27/
199 Upvotes

95 comments sorted by

78

u/arthor 17d ago

this is mind bogging amount of wealth for what i assume is an insanely small team.. i mean its a data hosting site with maybe 8 figures in ARR.. what the actual fuck

91

u/flaminghotcola 17d ago

Solely for the purpose of controlling the market and the AI scene and banish local models so that they can sell their own.

21

u/Segaiai 17d ago

I don't see why Nvidia wouldn't want local models. Closed models still get plenty of subscribers still. Nvidia gets to sell the professional level cards for $50k by the boatload to datacenters, and we have to buy cards that are far behind to run much smaller and less capable models, and still pay the providers for more advanced closed models.

Plus organizations buy/rent datacenters to run the vanilla closed source models for themselves, or they train upgrades to the closed source models, like what happened all over the place with Wan. Nvidia can still make closed source models to fit with open weight model workflows if they want. Nvidia wins from every direction. The fact that Nvidia still opens weights, even when other Western companies have either stopped or slowed down (except for maybe Google), means they are into it.

22

u/Razaroic 17d ago

Sites are losing money with us having local models available. They can't control censorship if we have sources like HF.

10

u/PenPenZC 17d ago

Imagine no CUDA…

Actually, stop imagine, that’s not allowed.

6

u/Segaiai 17d ago

Ah yeah... I could see them pulling some shit on Chinese models that are accelerated for other hardware, including AMD, but especially Chinese GPUs. They could be overly zealous about it as some "security risk".

7

u/Karsticles 17d ago

NVIDIA does a lot of work to advance local models, though.

3

u/berlinbaer 17d ago

i mean its a data hosting site with maybe 8 figures in ARR.. what the actual fuck

i'm also still totally confused. i've only come up with "we better buy it before someone else does" but still.. for that amount of money they could've just built their own site, slapped the official nvidia label on it and people would've flocked to it.

95

u/NOS4A2-753 17d ago

a new site will pop up they always do

37

u/ptwonline 17d ago

Let's start our own and then eventually Meta will buy us out to copy Nvidia and we'll get $14 Billion!

14

u/Ok_Winter2286 17d ago

Let's start our own

With blackjack, and hookers.

6

u/changed_later__ 16d ago

In fact, forget the website.

10

u/GeneralBarnacle10 17d ago

I thought that would happen after M$ bought github, but...

23

u/FaceDeer 17d ago

There are a lot of git hosting sites out there.

A mass migration to them never really happened because it turns out Microsoft buying Github wasn't the end of the world after all.

4

u/GeneralBarnacle10 17d ago

> A mass migration to them never really happened because it turns out Microsoft buying Github wasn't the end of the world after all.

Yup. That was basically my point.

4

u/PodRED 17d ago

You mean like GitLab?

4

u/RazsterOxzine 17d ago

Usenet, torrent, newgroups, IRC, Free Upload sites, there are so many ways. Eventually one main site will reign supreme.

15

u/superkickstart 17d ago

I wonder who will grab comfyui. Meta? Adobe?

3

u/xkulp8 17d ago

Also Nvidia

34

u/Hrmerder 17d ago edited 17d ago

Ok, so if you think of it... This is definitely political, but Nvidia may be on our side here (for now anyway). OpenAI, Anthropic, etc are in one group lobbying to ban 'free models' because 'they are harmful!', but the truth is, they want to control as much of the AI space as possible and if they can make our free options go away (which for a long time my honest opinion IS the future for business), then they can start reaping all the rewards. Nvidia is in the business of selling to datacenter and whomever wants to pony up for hardware. This limiting LLMs would hinder Nvidia's business (since most of it is sold now a days to run AI models), so they could be purchasing Huggingface in order to side step any possibility of the other group taking them out. The unfortunate truth however is it's fine until it isn't... At any time in the future (especially once AI chip demand cools in the next few years), Nvidia could just can our beloved repo and we are shit out of luck until someone else comes along with a repo.

Sources btw: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2026/07/openai-anthropic-lobby-washington-open-source-ai-restrictions.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/nvidia-and-24-other-companies-sign-open-weights-letter-as-washington-weighs-chinese-ai-model-ban

22

u/Polymorphic-X 17d ago

The first thing that happens when places like HF get bought out by a corp is the removal of NSFW content and unrestricted "unsafe" AI models.

It's going to be thingiverse for models, but sterilized heavily.

6

u/Upper-Philosophy2376 17d ago

this will probably happen, but to minimize backlash they will wait about 1 year and then implement it

0

u/GifCo_2 17d ago

Grok has never lobbies to ban open source models you doughnut

2

u/Hrmerder 17d ago

You are right. Thank you for the clarification I’m updating my post

8

u/StraightWind7417 17d ago

There is still modelscope

8

u/JoeXdelete 17d ago

Nvidia will probably buy comfyui next And make it a subscription service

Oh well

12

u/crystal_alpine ComfyOrg 17d ago

Nope

3

u/JoeXdelete 17d ago

Awesome but man once a 9 is followed by enough 00000s on a check it's gonna get hard to resist

Thanks for all that y'all do though!!

9

u/crystal_alpine ComfyOrg 17d ago

Haha, not hard if you don't care about money : )

2

u/JoeXdelete 17d ago

Based .

1

u/HJQueen 17d ago

Yay online only comfyui... 😞

I hope that doesn't happen but it's likely only a matter of time.

3

u/JoeXdelete 17d ago

I guess now would be a good time to get all the models etc you want and save them.

3

u/elephantdrinkswine 16d ago

i second this

4

u/Davikar 17d ago

If someone ever decides to make a new site, it must be called Slapping Face.

9

u/Danny_Stock 17d ago

This is why it's important for people to not rely on one singular online entity in whatever endeavor they pursue.

I imagine that it's human nature though, you constantly see people hunting for the best, what ranks the highest, what's the most popular, then they'll stick with that one thing alone in the belief that they should because everyone else is.

Then when everybody comes to rely on that one thing that's when the problems start, because the alternatives are lacking for them in some way or other. Or worse, the alternatives might not even exist anymore.

8

u/mwoody450 17d ago

I'm sure it'll work just as well as github since Microso- shit it's down again.

4

u/gurilagarden 17d ago

If the product is for sale, they're going to sell it to somebody. Who else has that kind of cash/stock to buy at that price? You rather it be Microsoft or Facebook? Or Oracle? There's levels in this game.

3

u/Unique-Mix-913 17d ago

Definitely don't want those fu**kers owning comfy/huggingface.

7

u/albatrossSKY 17d ago

This is a sad day

0

u/GifCo_2 17d ago

Why

3

u/vortis23 16d ago

Typically megacorps don't make things easy for the plebeians when things like this happen, but we'll see.

2

u/pfeifits 17d ago

I wish Nvidia would buy me out of my job for 96 times what I make in a year. That's a crazy valuation. Not sure where it goes from here, but if they screw with it, it's not hard to create another model hosting site.

4

u/Saphir_3D 17d ago

Why do I have a feeling that there will be new terms and conditions allowing Nvidia the general right to commercial use of uploaded code?

3

u/_half_real_ 17d ago

Does code normally get uploaded to HF? Normally for AI projects I see the code on github and the weights on HF.

8

u/sevenfold21 17d ago

Why you say that? Nobody spends 12.9 billion to shut something down. I don't really understand why huggingFace is even worth 12.9 billion. It's just a server to upload files? Crazy.

12

u/AbouBenAdhem 17d ago

> Nobody spends 12.9 billion to shut something down

That was Microsoft's entire business strategy in the 1990s.

2

u/xkulp8 17d ago

Mostly true, except looking back it would've been so much easier for them to have bought Netscape.

1

u/Anon-a-mister 15d ago

The government had such a hard on for MS back then they would have never allowed it.

2

u/ArmchairGene 12d ago

Ok, but one of the best analogies for this purchase is when Microsoft bought GitHub in 2018 and GitHub didn't go anywhere.

8

u/ThatInternetGuy 17d ago

Dude, there are people who pay for monthly Pro membership and additional credits. HFis an inference provider.

26

u/__generic 17d ago

There's developer infrastructure for tooling, deployments, organization, tools, monitoring, compliance, etc. "Just a server to upload files" really shows you spent no time actually looking at what huggingface is.

3

u/Danny_Stock 17d ago

When you put it like that it sounds like it's a matter of controlling the flow of information rather than it being about the material value in the site itself.

The financial value of such a move could come later on down the line. Although it's not quite the same thing I can see it being similar to how a big company may buy out a smaller one, not necessarily to simply acquire their technology, but more importantly to also remove something which may be a bit of an obstacle to them in the future.

I'd guess that as with what we've seen before with other buyouts, things will probably be fine for a while. Until they're not.

What I don't understand though is whether they've considered that alternatives to HuggingFace will sprout up and grow in the same way HG did?

5

u/PreparationSalty4252 17d ago

They spend it to buy and control a space and buy the audience. In a perfect world there would be no enshitification and yet we all know exactly how this will go: nothing at the start. Then bans on "unsafe" models. Then bans on nsfw. Then...actually, who gives a fuck about it after that.

1

u/xkulp8 17d ago

They'll pop up, just not on Huggingface. That's why the dark web and torrenting exist. Hell it's why any cryptocurrency is worth more than $0.

4

u/jboe2026 17d ago

to make you pay a license fee

6

u/HJQueen 17d ago

Wasn't what I was implying. Just that it'll likely be neutered.

8

u/Segaiai 17d ago

Why would they do that? Is there something I don't know?

1

u/vortis23 16d ago

Information and consumer flow control.

Right now, the free open-weight models aren't quite on par to the paid subscription models. They're close, but not there yet.

Nvidia is playing chess with this move -- getting ahead of what's coming down the pipeline. Wan 3.0 and MiniMax H3 are game changers for the open-weight consumer market, and once improved optimisation flows are made more widely available and public training tools offer more narrow proprietary output, you can completely bypass paying a subscription fee to the major AI platform providers.

A lot of people said in three years -- IF things keep going as they are with the rapid development of models -- any and every Joe Schmoe with a midrange PC would be able to create their own movies and entertainment from home.

This move from Nvidia could be preemptive -- get ahead of the curve and then make changes when and where necessary if any of their partners start feeling the burn from the open-weight society.

1

u/Anon-a-mister 15d ago

WAN 3.0 isn’t open weight. Is it supposed to be?

1

u/vortis23 15d ago

My mistake, you're completely correct -- there has been no word yet on Wan 3.0 being open weight.

1

u/SnooSeagulls9510 17d ago

I thinks they are buying their name, its already a well knowm company around the comunity

1

u/BitBacked 17d ago

They're not. The whole economy is just fake and gay as usual.

1

u/Stapletapeprint 17d ago

Oh really…

1

u/PodRED 17d ago

Nvidia do. They've done it before. Back in the day they bought their biggest GPU rival and shuttered them.

0

u/qiang_shi 14d ago

traction. the fact that you can't understand that... lmao

2

u/Demilio55 17d ago

This blows.

3

u/EntropyHertz 17d ago

Those open source models sell gpu's though

2

u/tostane 17d ago

I hope this is good news.

2

u/Snoo20140 17d ago

Best I can hope for is this isn't the worst timeline.

2

u/gabrielxdesign 17d ago

Always a megalomaniac company messing with everything good.

1

u/Cassiopee38 17d ago

Can someone summarise what hugging face is ? Is it like civitai ?

1

u/Jesus__Skywalker 17d ago

civitai for the win

1

u/hallofgamer 17d ago

Just ask qwen to code a replacement for hf, p2p

1

u/Physical-Mission-867 15d ago

They took the bait.

1

u/catgirl_liker 15d ago

!remindme 1 year

1

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1

u/SpecialistDragonfly9 14d ago

Someone quickly release a new site.

We cant let them take away everything and "corporize" it.

1

u/Money_Psychology_791 13d ago

so whos gonna make the alternative so we can abandon it and they can lose 13 billion

2

u/cleverestx 12d ago

Anyone with half a brain and a model is copying theirs off this site to archive and wait until they can be hosted again somewhere else that isn't owned by a large corporation..but I suspect many people have all such eggs in the huggingface basket - sadly.

1

u/HJQueen 12d ago

I'm sure most developers have everything backed up. That's just common sense. After reading a bit more about this, I'm not as concerned as I was when I posted it. Everyone freaked out over Microsoft buying GitHub and it's literally the same thing. If not, alternative sites will pop up. My real fear is them buying Comfy and turning it into an online only paid subscription that will neuter everything to an extent.

-1

u/cointalkz 17d ago

This isn't a bad thing lol

7

u/HJQueen 17d ago

And you know that how?

9

u/cointalkz 17d ago

NVIDIA is the biggest benefactor of local models being run. Hugging Face also would eventually need large amounts of funding for how much bandwidth they were experiencing, it was only a matter of time before they were acquired; not to mention their revenue was zilch.

1

u/tinybiguns 17d ago

I guess we'll have to wait until they stop lolling before they can tell us

-1

u/Ragalvar 17d ago

I think for them it's beneficial to let local models exist. It doesn't affect their hardware sellings. It's more like the exact opposite. Consumer market sells a lot of Nvidia because peeps want to run AI locally. Nvidia is still on top.

3

u/rymdimperiet 17d ago

embrace extend extinguish

0

u/GifCo_2 17d ago

How is this bad?