Hugging Face Resolves Patent Infringement Lawsuit with AI Startup FriendliAI
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Amelia Cross
- January 10, 2025
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Hugging Face and FriendliAI Settle Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Hugging Face, the AI developer platform, has reached a settlement with Korean AI startup FriendliAI, resolving a lawsuit over alleged patent infringement. According to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Delaware, the two parties finalized a confidential agreement on January 8, with FriendliAI agreeing to dismiss the suit “with prejudice,” preventing it from being refiled.
The dispute centered on FriendliAI’s patent for “batching with iteration-level scheduling,” which optimizes data batching in AI systems to process multiple requests simultaneously while accommodating dynamic updates to batches. FriendliAI alleged that Hugging Face’s Text Generation Inference tool infringed on this technology.
FriendliAI, founded in 2021 and backed by venture capital, sought damages, licensing fees, and attorneys’ costs in the lawsuit, which lasted nearly two years.
Hugging Face, a major player in the AI ecosystem with $235 million in funding from investors like Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, is known for hosting and developing AI tools, models, and consulting services. The company has not commented on the settlement, and the court will retain jurisdiction over the settlement agreement.
