Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for 12.9 billion dollars

Nvidia has reached an agreement to acquire Hugging Face, the leading open artificial‑intelligence model, dataset and machine‑learning tool platform, for 12.9 billion dollars. The deal was reported by The Information and confirmed by Reuters.

The possibility of a sale surfaced only days ago, when sources told Business Insider that Hugging Face was in talks with banks about potential bids around 13 billion dollars, though no final agreement had been reached. The new arrangement with Nvidia now supersedes those earlier discussions.

Hugging Face’s valuation has climbed sharply since its last funding round. In 2023 the company raised 235 million dollars at a 4.5 billion dollar valuation, while current annual revenue is estimated at roughly 150 million dollars.

Nvidia’s primary interest lies not in Hugging Face’s revenue but in its central role inside the open AI ecosystem. The Hugging Face Hub serves as the main public venue for publishing and sharing models and datasets, surrounded by tools for training, fine‑tuning and deploying models.

For Nvidia the acquisition strengthens another layer of the AI stack. The company already dominates the infrastructure used for training and inference, while Hugging Face sits closer to developers who choose models, libraries and tools for their projects.

A strategic rationale is also at play. Open‑weight models from competitors such as DeepSeek are gaining ground, and large AI companies are beginning to design their own accelerators. By acquiring Hugging Face, Nvidia aims to reinforce its position not only as a GPU supplier but as a platform for the open AI ecosystem.

The deal carries a reputational risk. Hugging Face currently supports models and tools that run on rival hardware from AMD and Intel, as well as on Nvidia’s own devices. After the purchase, Nvidia will have to preserve developer trust and maintain the platform’s neutrality, which has been key to Hugging Face’s status as the heart of the open‑weight ecosystem.

If completed on the stated terms, the transaction would rank among Nvidia’s largest ever. The company would gain control of the platform through which developers discover, publish and use a large share of today’s open AI models.

Reported by Habr News.