Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence developer platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, marking one of the largest acquisitions in the chipmaker’s history and significantly expanding its position in the open-model AI ecosystem.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang confirmed the transaction Thursday, saying Nvidia plans to scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI development tools worldwide.
Hugging Face Brings More Than 18 Million Developers
Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has become one of the most widely used platforms for developers building and deploying artificial intelligence models.
The platform is used by more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators and hosts more than 3 million AI models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies use Hugging Face to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI systems, according to Nvidia.
The platform has become particularly influential in the development of open-source and open-weight AI, providing a central repository for models, datasets, software libraries and development tools.
Platform Will Remain Open
Nvidia said Hugging Face will continue operating as an open platform following the acquisition.
Developers will remain free to use different models, frameworks, cloud providers, inference services and computing platforms, and Nvidia hardware will not be required to use or deploy models through Hugging Face.
The commitment is significant because Hugging Face has built much of its position around providing a neutral platform where developers can access AI technologies from competing companies.
Nvidia Expands Beyond AI Chips
The acquisition strengthens Nvidia’s presence beyond semiconductors and data-center infrastructure, giving the company direct access to a major software and developer ecosystem.
Reuters reported that the deal includes approximately $11.9 billion for Hugging Face investors, as well as about $1 billion in equity-based incentives for employees who join Nvidia.
The move also comes as some of Nvidia’s largest customers, including Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, continue developing their own AI processors in an effort to reduce reliance on external chip suppliers. Supporting a broader open-model ecosystem could help Nvidia expand demand for AI computing across a wider group of companies and developers.
A Major Bet on Open AI
Demand for open-weight AI models has increased as companies seek alternatives to proprietary systems and look for greater control over deployment costs, customization and data.
Hugging Face gives Nvidia a direct position in the infrastructure developers use to share, test, customize and deploy those models.
The acquisition also surpasses Nvidia’s $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox in 2020, making Hugging Face the company’s largest outright acquisition to date.
The transaction is expected to close in 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
Sources: Nvidia, Reuters.
