The gist of huggingface is that they host pre-trained open source models for free. Anyone can download them and then use them offline without HF. And their paid offerings aren't even close to being cost competitive with buying a few 3090 workstations.
Also, HF doesn't really have any technical moat. Other people research and train those models, they just provide the hosting. In my opinion, their biggest value is the community. But how do you monetize a group of motivated volunteers?
What stops GitHub from offering free LFS hosting for AI models, thereby copying the foundation of HFs community?
And lastly, is there really much of a market in making SOTA AI beginner-friendly? You still need to buy/rent that A100 GPU server. Who's going to be greedy on salary for people operating a $20k/month machinery?