Nvidia to Buy Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion

Nvidia has agreed to buy AI model platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, the latest step by the chip giant to use its financial heft to exert greater control in the AI ecosystem.

Nvidia’s announcement confirms The Information’s report last week that Nvidia and Hugging Face had agreed to a deal for $12.9 billion. The acquisition of Hugging Face puts Nvidia in charge of a key distribution channel for millions of models in the race among open-source model developers to catch up to closed-source AI models from Anthropic and OpenAI.

Hugging Face will remain an open platform, Nvidia said in a press release. Nvidia is paying $11.9 billion and setting up a $1 billion equity retention program for Hugging Face employees who join Nvidia, according to a securities filing.

The acquisition is the latest among a flurry of investments and license-and-hire deals Nvidia has struck in recent months. Nvidia has put tens of billions of dollars in everything from AI application developers such as Perplexity and Poolside to companies that develop land and power for data centers.

Nvidia has been boosting its own effort to develop Nemotron-branded open-source AI models and has committed to spend tens of billions developing its own open models.