Hugging Face has spent a decade becoming the place nearly every open-weight AI model in the world gets published, downloaded, and shared. Now, according to Business Insider, it's quietly testing whether someone wants to buy that position outright for around $13 billion, nearly triple its last valuation. The company has brought in a bank to gauge buyer interest, though no deal exists yet, and its own CEO has spent the past few days publicly emphasizing the platform's "long-term responsibility" to the community that trusts it with their data and models, which reads less like someone mid-negotiation and more like someone testing the temperature of the water.

Meanwhile, a very different kind of AI company just watched its valuation nearly triple in a matter of weeks. General Intuition, which trains AI agents on hundreds of millions of hours of video game footage, is in talks to raise at a $6 billion valuation, up from $2.3 billion just weeks ago.

• Hugging Face is reportedly exploring a $13 billion acquisition, nearly triple its last valuation.

• Robotics startup General Intuition nearly tripled its valuation to $6 billion in weeks.

• OpenAI's product chief says "the world seems to be ready" for AI agents that do your job, not just answer questions.

• A stealthy new AI assistant called Instinct is drawing real concern over how much personal data it demands.

• A star AI hedge fund that nearly imploded earlier this year is now under federal investigation.

…and a whole lot more that you can read about below.

Hugging Face has been fielding acquisition offers valuing it around $13 billion, Business Insider reported, nearly triple the $4.5 billion mark from its 2023 round. No deal exists yet, and the company earlier this year turned down a $500 million Nvidia investment that would have valued it at $7 billion. CEO Clement Delangue told Equity, "We're building a platform for the community, and they're trusting us... so we have a long-term responsibility to them." The interest follows Stripe's $7 billion acquisition of OpenRouter.

General Intuition is in talks to raise at a $6 billion valuation from Valor Equity Partners, Point72 Ventures, and Seven Seven Six, up from $2.3 billion just weeks ago. Founded by Pim de Witte from his gaming platform Medal, the company trains AI agents on hundreds of millions of hours of gameplay footage, betting that spatial reasoning learned in games transfers to real robots. Valor's involvement is notable, it's the firm's first AI lab bet since SpaceX.

From $2.3 billion to $6 billion in a matter of weeks

In a new interview, OpenAI's head of core products, Thibault Sottiaux, said ChatGPT Work, the company's push to bring Codex-style autonomous agents to non-engineers, has already hit 20 million users. "We definitely see that the world seems to be ready," he said, arguing conversational AI beats making people learn a new app. Not everyone agrees the approach is settled science: benchmarks from Databricks found a different, open-source "harness" outperformed Codex using the identical underlying model.

Instinct, a private-access AI assistant from a small San Francisco team led by ex-Sierra researcher Noah Shinn, connects to your email, messages, calendar, and device audio and location to act on your behalf with minimal check-ins. Early testers call it "magic," but security voices are raising real concerns, one investor noted products like this will "change modern security norms," with users unknowingly handing over passwords and data to third parties. Instinct's team has stayed silent on the criticism so far.

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General Intuition Nears a $6 Billion Valuation

General Intuition is in talks to raise new funding at a $6 billion pre-money valuation from Valor Equity Partners, Point72 Ventures, and Seven Seven Six, alongside existing backers Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, up from $2.3 billion just weeks ago.

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