Nvidia confirmed a $12.9 billion agreement to purchase Hugging Face/), a move that broadens the chipmaker's role from hardware into software and services that sit above it. The agreement had been expected following last week's report by The Information. In a Thursday blog post, CEO Jensen Huang said, "Together, we will scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide," and that Hugging Face will "remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem."
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue told CNBC on Thursday that his team reached out to Huang during the summer about a deal, "and a few weeks later, here we are." In an interview with CNBC's Becky Quick on Squawk Box, Delangue said the summer felt like a turning point for Hugging Face and open-source AI, with a need for more resources, scale and visibility. He said he initiated conversations because Nvidia was a "perfect home." Huang added, "I am honored that Clem came to me as he considered the next chapter of Hugging Face and believed NVIDIA would be a great home for the company, its community and the future of open models."
This is Nvidia's second largest acquisition on record, trailing only its December deal to buy $20 billion worth of assets from chipmaker Groq. Before that, its biggest purchase was Israeli chipmaker Mellanox in 2019 for almost $7 billion. Nvidia is now the world's most valuable company, propelled by voracious demand for its GPUs that underpin the generative AI surge. Buying Hugging Face signals a sizable bet on a widely used AI platform and underscores that Nvidia is not just a chip company.
Hugging Face also recently dealt with a security breach that spotlighted how quickly AI tools and cyber risks are evolving. Delangue, a vocal supporter of open-source models, said engineering mistakes caused the incident and that the team resolved it using an Nvidia-adapted variant of a Chinese open model.
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If you follow AI to track where growth is headed, this deal ties Nvidia's hardware engine to a massive software community where developers actually build. That could shift more of Nvidia's story from selling chips to shaping the platforms people use every day, with revenue streams to match.
