Google Cloud and Hugging Face have forged a strategic alliance, designating Google Cloud as the primary destination for Hugging Face’s AI operations.
The partnership aims to seamlessly integrate the two companies’ services, enhancing the user experience and operational efficiency for developers who leverage AI technologies in their continuous development initiatives. By combining forces, the two companies aim to accelerate the adoption of AI applications across various industries and democratize AI adoption.
Collaboration delivers an open-source platform for DevSecOps
Hugging Face, with its GitHub-like platform for sharing open-source AI models, has garnered significant attention, reflected in its $4.5 billion valuation. The platform not only hosts AI models but also facilitates the sharing of related files like training datasets.
Through its monetization model, Hugging Face offers essential cloud services such as AutoTrain and Inference Endpoints, catering to the needs of developers seeking to streamline their AI workflows.
The collaboration brings advanced infrastructure integration to the forefront, with Vertex AI serving as a central component. Developers can now access Google’s AI development tools seamlessly from the Hugging Face interface, simplifying the AI development process.
Integration with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) enables developers to run AI workloads efficiently in optimized containers, leveraging Google’s AI-optimized chips available through its cloud platform.
A shared vision for democratizing AI
The collaboration is designed to democratize access to advanced AI technologies, with plans to provide open-source developers access to Cloud TPU v5e for enhanced inference task performance and lower latency.
Future support for A3 VMs, powered by NVIDIA’s H100 Tensor Core GPUs, will additionally streamline training processes and promise significant improvements in performance and networking bandwidth.
“This partnership ensures that developers on Hugging Face will have access to Google Cloud’s purpose-built AI platform, Vertex AI, along with our secure infrastructure, which can accelerate the next generation of AI services and applications,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud.
Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, stated, “With this new partnership, we will make it easy for Hugging Face users and Google Cloud customers to leverage the latest open models together with leading optimized AI infrastructure and tools from Google Cloud including Vertex AI and TPUs to meaningfully advance developers’ ability to build their own AI models.”
Opportunities for MSPs to deliver better AI services
This collaboration offers significant value within the IT channel by providing access to state-of-the-art AI infrastructure and development tools. Managed service companies (MSPs) and IT resellers can leverage the integrated solutions to deliver more efficient AI services to their clients.
By tapping into the combined expertise of Google Cloud and Hugging Face, IT channel partners can stay at the forefront of AI innovation to enhance their competitiveness and deliver greater value to their customers.
Watch (or listen to) Network Solutions Provider USA CEO Phillip Walker discuss how MSPs can get themselves and their clients “pre-AI-ready” in this exclusive interview with Channel Insider: Partner POV — plus, how to make a “channel pizza.”
