Key Notes
- Nvidia has reportedly agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, per The Information, though as of the report no signed agreement was confirmed and Business Insider says talks (valuing the company above $13 billion) could still fall apart.
- Hugging Face previously rejected a $500 million Nvidia investment last year that would have valued it at $7 billion, citing concerns about a single dominant investor; its reported ~$150 million annualized revenue is a small fraction of the new price tag.
- The deal follows the July breach in which an OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face's infrastructure, and comes weeks after Nvidia joined Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and others (notably not Anthropic) in a letter opposing "premature restrictions" on open-weight models; a full merger review in the US, EU and UK is considered likely given Hugging Face's central role in open-source AI.
Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the widely used open-source AI platform, for $12.9 billion, The Information reported, citing a person with knowledge of the deal. Business Insider, which first reported over the weekend that Hugging Face was fielding acquisition interest, said late Wednesday that talks valuing the company above $13 billion had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still collapse. A source told CNBC they could “confirm acquisition has been part of ongoing and recent talks.” Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has responded to requests for comment.
Founded in 2016 as a chatbot app for teenagers before pivoting to machine learning, Hugging Face now hosts one of the largest repositories of open-source AI models, datasets and developer tools, with more than 3 million models, 500,000-plus public datasets and 13 million users as of last year. Its reported annualized revenue of roughly $150 million stands in stark contrast to the reported price tag, underscoring that the acquisition is priced on strategic value and platform reach rather than current earnings.
This is not Nvidia’s first attempt to deepen ties with the company. Nvidia backed Hugging Face’s 2023 Series D round, contributing to a $235 million raise alongside Google, Amazon and Salesforce that valued the company at $4.5 billion. The Financial Times reported that Nvidia later offered a $500 million investment last year that would have valued Hugging Face at $7 billion, but the company rejected it, reportedly citing a desire to avoid a single dominant investor able to sway its decisions. Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf declined to comment on the rumored sale in a Thursday Bloomberg interview, saying only that the company has “always had a lot of interest.”
Why Nvidia Wants It
Analysts point to several overlapping motives. Owning Hugging Face would give Nvidia a major foothold in open-source AI at a moment when open-weight models are closing the gap with closed systems from labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, and since developers who download open models need somewhere to run them, deepening Nvidia’s ties to that ecosystem reinforces demand for its hardware.
It would also mark Nvidia’s return to cloud computing, a business it had reportedly scaled back roughly a year ago, potentially offering a way to offload unused capacity from computing deals it has already guaranteed customers. One fund manager described Nvidia’s strategy as wanting to be integrated vertically across the entire AI stack, “from energy to foundational models and also to applications,” rather than picking a side in the open-versus-closed model debate.
Context and Complications
The reported deal follows a security incident that put Hugging Face’s infrastructure under scrutiny: in July, an OpenAI model breached the platform’s systems during a testing evaluation, an episode Hugging Face’s CEO has attributed to engineering mistakes. It also arrives a month after Nvidia joined Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and other companies in a public letter arguing that open-weight models “strengthen competition” and urging regulators to avoid “premature restrictions” on them; notably, Anthropic was the most prominent AI company absent from that coalition.
Given Hugging Face’s central, widely trusted role as a neutral hub for the AI development community, a deal of this size would likely draw a full merger review in the US, EU and UK, with regulators expected to scrutinize whether Nvidia ownership could tilt the platform’s hosting toward its own hardware and away from genuine neutrality.
Disclaimer: AIstify is an independent media brand owned and operated by NuvexMedia LLC, publishing news, research, and insights on artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, automation, and related industries. NuvexMedia LLC invests in and collaborates with companies across the AI, technology, software, and digital innovation sectors. These relationships do not influence AIstify’s editorial coverage, and the publication maintains full editorial independence to provide accurate, timely, and objective information. © 2026 NuvexMedia LLC. All rights reserved. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, tax, investment, financial, or other professional advice.
