NVIDIA agreed to acquire Hugging Face, one of the biggest platforms for open-source AI models, for USD 12.9 billion. The deal, first reported by The Information, would rank among NVIDIA’s largest acquisitions and expand the chipmaker’s reach well beyond processors and data-centre hardware.
Hugging Face operates a GitHub-style platform where developers and researchers can discover, download, and share AI models and datasets. The company also provides tools and cloud services that help developers build and run AI applications.
For NVIDIA, bringing Hugging Face under its umbrella could strengthen its position across the AI technology stack. The chipmaker already dominates the market for GPUs used to train and run AI systems. Owning a major platform used by developers could give NVIDIA a much closer relationship with the people building the next generation of AI applications.
The acquisition came as the AI industry increasingly divide between open-source or open-weight models and closed systems developed by companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
NVIDIA has a strong reason to support the open-model ecosystem. Several major AI companies are developing their own chips to reduce their dependence on NVIDIA hardware. A larger open-source ecosystem could encourage developers and businesses to build and run a wider range of models, potentially supporting continued demand for NVIDIA's computing infrastructure.
NVIDIA already invested heavily in open AI models through its own Nemotron family and backed several AI companies, including Hugging Face.
The reported USD 12.9 billion price tag represents a major increase from Hugging Face's previous valuation. The company raised USD 235 million in 2023, giving it a valuation of around USD 4.5 billion. NVIDIA participated in that funding round alongside investors including Salesforce and Alphabet's Google.
Hugging Face reported that its annualized revenue recently reached around USD 150 million, up from roughly USD 100 million only a couple of months earlier. That would put NVIDIA's reported purchase price at roughly 80 times annualized revenue.
Interestingly, Hugging Face had previously rejected a USD 500 million investment proposal from NVIDIA that would have valued the company at USD 7 billion.
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The biggest question now is what NVIDIA ownership could mean for Hugging Face's traditionally open and hardware-neutral ecosystem. The platform supports models and tools that work across diverse computing environments, including hardware from NVIDIA's competitors. Bringing the company under NVIDIA's control could therefore raise questions about neutrality and whether the platform's priorities might change.
If completed, the deal would mark a major shift in NVIDIA's strategy from being primarily the company supplying the hardware behind the AI boom to becoming a much bigger player in the software, developer, and open-model ecosystem as well.