(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc.'s Google forged a deal to host AI software from startup Hugging Face on its cloud computing network, giving open source developers greater access to the technology.
As part of the agreement, Hugging Face will offer its popular platform through the Google Cloud, according to a statement Thursday. That paves the way for more developers to tap the startup's tools, which they use to build their own AI applications, and potentially speed up the pace of innovation.
For Google, the agreement strengthens its ties with the open source AI community, where engineers are developing models that can rival those of big tech companies — at a lower cost. Last year, a Google engineer made waves with a manifesto asserting that the tech giant risked losing its edge in AI to open source developers.
Founded in 2016, New York-based Hugging Face has emerged as a popular destination for sharing open source AI models. As a result of the partnership, developers on Hugging Face's platform will be able to use Google Cloud's computing power and specialized chips for models and other generative AI products.
“With this new partnership, we will make it easy for Hugging Face users and Google Cloud customers to leverage the latest open models together,” Hugging Face Chief Executive Officer Clement Delangue said in the statement.
Google participated in Hugging Face's last funding round, which valued the startup at $4.5 billion.
--With assistance from Rachel Metz.
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