AI developer platform Hugging Face is exploring a sale that could value the company at more than $13bn, according to reports. The French-American startup is said to have hired a bank to sound out potential buyers, although no deal has yet been agreed, Business Insider reported.

Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has become one of the AI industry's most widely used developer platforms, allowing users to discover, share and build with thousands of open and proprietary AI models. The company was last valued at $4.5bn in 2023, according to Pitch Book, with investors including Lux Capital, Addition and Salesforce Ventures.

The reported talks come just days after payments giant Stripe agreed to acquire AI model marketplace Open Router for around $8bn, highlighting growing appetite for businesses that sit at the centre of the AI ecosystem rather than developing large language models (LLMs) themselves.

Hugging Face has recently found itself in the spotlight after Open AI revealed that one of its AI agents breached the company's platform during a controlled cybersecurity test, prompting calls from CEO Clement Delangue for stronger transparency around AI security incidents. Open AI and Hugging Face subsequently partnered to investigate the incident, with the Microsoft-backed tech giant helping the French scaleup improve its cyber defence. "This was our first incident of this kind, and we want to thank Open AI for its transparency about what happened and for the collaboration," Hugging Face cofounder Clem Delangue wrote on X. "But this incident also reinforced my belief in the importance of access to capable open-weight models for cyber defence."