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Breaking down Nvidia's Hugging Face and Poolside bets | E2331

Episode 2331 Published 2 weeks, 4 days ago

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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

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PayPal https://paypal.launch.co

Today's show:

*Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, just days after quietly licensing Poolside's coding model for $6 billion+. On TWiST, Jason lays out why this is actually the biggest AI story of the year. Nvidia plans to offer enterprises unmetered, unlimited on-prem compute, pulling them away from reliance on Anthropic and OpenAI's frontier models and products.

PLUS we're chatting with Halter founder & CEO Craig Piggott about how his company helps farmers optimize their land use via solar-powered AI-driven cattle collars. AND Hop Aero CEO and co-founder Matija Milenovic shows us Rook, his autonomous hypersonic cargo rocket that can launch from a shipping container and deliver cargo up to 450 miles away in about 15 minutes. Finally, Jason and Lon explain why you never post Slop on the timeline.

Guests:

Craig Piggott on X: https://x.com/craig_piggott

Halter: https://www.halterhq.com/

Matija Milenovic on X: https://x.com/mat_milenovic

Hop Aero: https://hopaero.com/

Relevant Links:

OpenAI Open Letter: https://openai.com/collective-cyberdefense/

OpenAI Hugging Face report: https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/

OpenAI Jalapeño report: https://openai.com/index/jalapeno-first-results/

Dario Amodei-Gavin Baker tweet thread: https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758816376807762

TechCrunch: Nvidia-Hugging Face deal: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/nvidia-closes-in-on-hugging-face-acquisition/

TechCrunch coverage of Halter: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/04/unpacking-peter-thiels-big-bet-on-solar-powered-cow-collars/