Hugging Face acquires XetHub to replace Git LFS with custom storage backend for HF Hub

AI Impact Summary

Hugging Face has announced the acquisition of XetHub with a plan to replace the Hub's Git LFS-based storage with XetHub's custom, chunked storage backend. This shift enables deduplicated, chunk-level updates, so changing a small portion of a large file (for example, a 10GB Parquet file or a GGUF metadata change) will require re-uploading only the affected chunks. The change targets Hub-scale data and models, implying significant efficiency gains for multi-petabyte datasets and collaboration workflows, though it will entail migration work across Hugging Face Hub repositories and assets.