Nvidia Announces $12.93 Billion Deal to Acquire Hugging Face

A reported deal is now a confirmed agreement

SANTA CLARA, California — Nvidia announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for exactly $12,930,300,000, turning a previously reported transaction into a confirmed agreement involving one of the most influential platforms in open artificial intelligence.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang disclosed the agreement in a company post dated September 3. Reuters and the Associated Press independently reported the announcement. The transaction is an agreement to acquire the company, not a completed acquisition.

Reuters reports that approximately $11.9 billion would go to Hugging Face investors and that Nvidia plans an equity-based retention program of up to $1 billion for employees who join the chipmaker. Nvidia's public announcement confirms the total price but does not provide a closing date.

Read the source: Nvidia: Official acquisition announcement and open-platform commitments ↗

Nvidia promises the platform will remain open

Huang said Hugging Face will continue supporting models from across the AI ecosystem and will remain compatible with multiple clouds and accelerator platforms. He explicitly said Nvidia hardware will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.

That commitment matters because Hugging Face has become a central place for developers and researchers to publish, evaluate and deploy open models, datasets and applications. Nvidia says the platform serves more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators as well as more than 200,000 companies.

The same company figures say users share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications through Hugging Face. Those totals are Nvidia's current representations about the platform; the announcement does not include an independent audit of the figures.

Read the source: Reuters: Deal structure, strategic context and market reaction ↗

Why the California deal carries industry-wide stakes

Santa Clara-based Nvidia is already the dominant supplier of the high-end processors used to train and run many AI systems. Acquiring a major distribution and collaboration hub would extend its reach beyond computing hardware and further into the software and developer layer of the AI industry.

Reuters describes the transaction as among Nvidia's biggest and reports that Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion in its last disclosed funding round in 2023. Nvidia was already an investor and contributor, with the company saying it has released more than 500 models and more than 250 datasets on the platform.

Nvidia says its infrastructure and engineering resources will improve Hugging Face reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment. Those are company projections, not completed outcomes. The promise of hardware neutrality will be measurable only after ownership changes and product decisions begin.

Read the source: Associated Press: Independent report on the announced acquisition ↗

What is confirmed—and what remains unknown

Confirmed: Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9303 billion; Nvidia says the platform will retain its brand and remain open to competing models, frameworks, clouds and processors; and Reuters reports the price includes an employee-retention program of up to $1 billion.

Not yet established in the reviewed public materials: when the deal will close, which regulatory approvals or reviews will be required, whether regulators will impose conditions, how Hugging Face's governance will change, or how independently its neutrality commitments will be enforced.

Developers should not confuse an announced agreement with a completed takeover. Existing Hugging Face services remain available, and Nvidia has not announced an immediate requirement to migrate workloads, change hardware or abandon competing infrastructure.

What’s the Scoop With Broach will update this report when either company or regulators release closing terms, review milestones or material changes to the platform. The accompanying image is an authentic 2018 file photograph of Nvidia's Santa Clara headquarters and does not depict Hugging Face or the acquisition negotiations.

Read the source: Wikimedia Commons: CC BY-SA 4.0 Nvidia headquarters photograph ↗