Nvidia Officially Confirms $12.9 Billion Acquisition of Hugging Face

Nvidia has announced it signed a binding agreement to acquire Hugging Face, the platform often called "the GitHub for artificial intelligence," for $12.9 billion. The announcement formally confirms a deal that had been rumored for weeks to be close to finalization, and it has now taken the shape of a binding agreement disclosed in securities filings.

The size of the price tag stands in sharp contrast to how Nvidia valued Hugging Face just a year ago. Back then, the company turned down an investment offer of around $500 million that would have valued it at $7 billion, choosing to stay independent. The current deal is nearly double that rejected valuation and almost triple the $4.5 billion mark at which Hugging Face raised $235 million in funding in 2023.

Why Nvidia Is Buying Hugging Face

For years, Hugging Face has served as the central repository for open AI models, used by millions of developers and thousands of companies testing or deploying models without building their own infrastructure. For Nvidia, which dominates the hardware used to train and run AI models, the acquisition marks a deeper push into the software and open-source community layer, an area where the company has so far mainly been a chip supplier rather than a platform owner.

Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue explained the decision to sell by saying that open artificial intelligence has reached a turning point and needs more resources, more scale, and more visibility than the company could provide on its own.

Open AI has reached an inflection point and needs more resources, more scale, more visibility - Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face

Security Context

The acquisition comes after a security incident in which Hugging Face's systems were attacked using OpenAI models during testing. The platform had to turn to an open-source model to defend itself, given restrictions on using closed models. The episode underscored how critical open-model infrastructure has become for the security of the entire AI ecosystem, and it is against this backdrop that Nvidia is framing the purchase as an investment in the resilience and independence of open-source software.

Financial Backing for the Deal

Nvidia can afford a purchase of this size thanks to record financial results. Last quarter, the company reported revenue of $96.2 billion, and its market valuation topped $5 trillion. Nvidia is forecasting roughly 70 percent revenue growth next year, giving it the firepower for further investment across the entire AI supply chain, from chips to development platforms.

What This Means for Polish Companies and Developers

For Polish teams using open-source models through Hugging Face, the change in ownership raises a key question about the platform's future direction: will it remain a neutral hub open to all chipmakers, or start favoring Nvidia hardware? Domestic startups and companies building their own AI deployments on models pulled from Hugging Face will be watching closely to see whether access and licensing terms for models stay unchanged once the deal closes.

The transaction still requires regulatory approval, with closing planned for the first half of 2027. That review process, which may include antitrust scrutiny in the United States and the European Union, will determine whether, and under what conditions, Nvidia gains full control of one of the world's most important open AI platforms.