Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence developer platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, expanding the chipmaker’s reach into the ecosystem for open models, datasets and AI applications.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang announced the transaction on September 3. The companies did not disclose an expected closing date or regulatory timetable in the company announcement.
A larger role in open AI
Hugging Face operates a widely used platform where developers and researchers publish, evaluate and deploy AI models and supporting resources. Nvidia said more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use the platform, which hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. It added that more than 200,000 companies use Hugging Face.
The acquisition would move Nvidia further beyond processors and infrastructure into a software and developer platform that influences how organizations choose models, frameworks, cloud services and hardware. The companies already work together to help developers use Nvidia computing services through Hugging Face.
Nvidia said Hugging Face will remain open to models and tools from across the industry. Huang wrote that developers will continue to choose their preferred models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms, and that Nvidia hardware will not be required to build or deploy through Hugging Face.
The company also said the platform will continue to support open-source and open-weight models, multicloud environments and hardware accelerators from different providers. Nvidia plans to use its infrastructure and engineering resources to improve the platform’s reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment capabilities.
Deal carries strategic and competitive questions
Reuters reported that Nvidia will pay about $11.9 billion to Hugging Face investors and provide an equity-based retention program of up to $1 billion for employees who join Nvidia. Those components broadly account for the announced transaction value.
The price represents a substantial increase from Hugging Face’s last disclosed valuation. The New York-based company was valued at $4.5 billion in a 2023 funding round backed by investors including Salesforce, AMD and Amazon, according to Reuters.
The transaction comes as open models have become a more important part of the global AI market. Unlike fully closed services, many open-weight models can be downloaded, customized and deployed on infrastructure selected by the user. That flexibility has attracted businesses seeking more control over cost, data and deployment, while developers increasingly use models from companies in both the United States and China.
Nvidia’s commitment to keep the platform neutral will be closely watched. Some developers and analysts cited by Reuters said ownership by the dominant supplier of AI accelerators could give Nvidia incentives to favor its own hardware over competing chips, even if other options remain formally supported.
Nvidia said it has released more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets on Hugging Face. The acquisition would give it a closer relationship with a global developer community at a time when major customers, including cloud and AI companies, are designing more of their own processors.
The companies have not yet detailed Hugging Face’s post-acquisition governance, the transaction’s financing structure beyond the reported investor payment and employee retention program, or the regulatory approvals required. Completion therefore remains subject to terms and reviews that were not specified in the initial announcement.
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