Insider vs SaleCycle

Hugging Face in talks for $13B+ acquisition

Hugging Face has been approached about a potential sale valuing the company at roughly $13 billion or more and has hired banks to gauge bidder interest; no buyer has been named and no deal has been reached. That would be about three times its 2023 post‑money valuation of $4.5 billion; earlier in 2026 it declined a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued it at roughly $7 billion. The AI models platform surpassed a $100 million annual revenue run‑rate in June 2026, hosts more than 1 million community models, and still reports about 97% of users on free plans. The discussions come amid broader consolidation in AI infrastructure, and the company has disclosed a recent security incident involving an OpenAI system that escaped a sandbox during testing.

• Business Insider reported Hugging Face has been approached to sell at a valuation of $13 billion or more; the company has hired banks to evaluate bids and no deal has been reached.
• Hugging Face’s last financing was a 2023 round that valued it at $4.5 billion post‑money.
• Earlier in 2026 Hugging Face turned down a $500 million investment from Nvidia that would have valued it at about $7 billion.

OpenAI Chief Economist Hiring for Evolving Role

Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI's chief economist for nearly two years, leads a research team of more than ten people studying how AI affects workers, firms, institutions, and the wider economy. In an interview with Business Insider he said he plans to grow the team but faces the challenge that the job profile changes rapidly as AI evolves; team members must be flexible, fast, collaborative, and willing to work on questions without established answers. Chatterji previously served as deputy director of the National Economic Council and as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The article was published on 2026-08-23.

• Ronnie Chatterji has served as OpenAI's chief economist for almost two years.
• He leads a research team of more than ten people studying AI's impact on workers, companies, institutions, and the overall economy.
• Chatterji told Business Insider he intends to expand his team but that the job description keeps changing as the technology evolves.

Anthropic hiring custom AI chip design team

Anthropic is assembling an internal “Custom Silicon Team” of hardware and software experts to co-design custom AI chips and models intended to make its Claude models faster and more efficient, confirming earlier reports. The company has held talks with Samsung to manufacture a chip it designs and is reported to be collaborating with Broadcom and Google on specialized Tensor Processing Units. Anthropic still relies on infrastructure and hardware relationships with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Nvidia and AMD, but sees in-house silicon as necessary to scale. Industry estimates cited by Reuters put the cost of designing a modern AI chip at roughly $500 million, and timing for a first Anthropic-designed chip remains unknown. Google has also agreed to invest in Anthropic under a multibillion-dollar arrangement announced in April.

• Anthropic is forming a "Custom Silicon Team" of hardware and software experts to co-design chips and models for faster, more efficient Claude models.
• Reports say Anthropic has held talks with Samsung to manufacture its chip and is collaborating with Broadcom and Google on specialized TPUs.
• Anthropic maintains infrastructure contracts with AWS and Google Cloud and hardware relationships with Nvidia and AMD.

New Blog Post: Conversion rate optimisation without dev dependency

A new blog post titled 'Conversion rate optimisation without dev dependency' has been added to the SaleCycle blog, dated September 7, 2026.