Sep 14, 2026 · 41 min · 11 segments
An escape hatch is the thing that lets you leave. You build on something that also works on somebody else's hardware, so your vendor can't lock you in. Open weight models were supposed to be that…
Frank BuchholzHostNealPanelist
Robert HenryPanelist
Chauncey LarsenPanelistJacobPanelistDiscussion PanelistPanelist
All right, so moving on into the rundown, there was a lot of news that happened this week, but one of 'em, and I know that it's a reoccurring theme because we've been talking about it for the last few weeks, is that Hugging Face was acquired officially by Nvidia.
But in the SEC filing, Nvidia declared that they have support for other chip vendors, and they're planning to close the deal sometime in the first half of 2027.
But this comparison of what I was throwing out of GitHub and OpenGL, why does a hardware company want to own the place you go before you've picked any hardware? So I'm interested in everybody's opinion out there on this one.
The first thing for me is that I think the actual dollar amount has some characters in it-
... that are tied t- I think I heard that it's the characters in it that are actually the hugging face emoji.
And so when I see that dollar amount, it just makes me think if they have the ability to just throw out a random dollar amount and it's not actually heavily negotiated to where they can put an Easter egg in it, like it feels like it's just made up money.
It's just made up [laughs] at that point.
Well, that's kind of true about the entire-
...
AI industry and financing right now.
[laughs] It's crazy.
What was that, Neal?
Oh, it's $70 million less than a clean 13 billion.
So I guess if you're exiting for 13 billion, what's a $70 million hit to include some Easter eggs? Yeah, it's the hugging face emoji is the, is the actual hidden Easter egg there in the acquisition amount.
Hey gang, Robert Henry.
Full disclosure, employee with Microsoft, but here to represent just an industry perspective.
Good to be back.
Hey, and quick shout out to Laura last week for stepping up.
All right, so moving on into the rundown, there was a lot of news that happened this week, but one of 'em, and I know that it's a reoccurring theme because we've been talking about it for the last few weeks, is that Hugging Face was acquired officially by Nvidia.
But in the SEC filing, Nvidia declared that they have support for other chip vendors, and they're planning to close the deal sometime in the first half of 2027.
But this comparison of what I was throwing out of GitHub and OpenGL, why does a hardware company want to own the place you go before you've picked any hardware? So I'm interested in everybody's opinion out there on this one.
The first thing for me is that I think the actual dollar amount has some characters in it-
... that are tied t- I think I heard that it's the characters in it that are actually the hugging face emoji.
And so when I see that dollar amount, it just makes me think if they have the ability to just throw out a random dollar amount and it's not actually heavily negotiated to where they can put an Easter egg in it, like it feels like it's just made up money.
It's just made up [laughs] at that point.
Well, that's kind of true about the entire-
...
AI industry and financing right now.
[laughs] It's crazy.
What was that, Neal?
Oh, it's $70 million less than a clean 13 billion.
So I guess if you're exiting for 13 billion, what's a $70 million hit to include some Easter eggs? Yeah, it's the hugging face emoji is the, is the actual hidden Easter egg there in the acquisition amount.
Hey gang, Robert Henry.
Full disclosure, employee with Microsoft, but here to represent just an industry perspective.
Good to be back.
Hey, and quick shout out to Laura last week for stepping up.
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