Nvidia Nears $12.9 Billion Deal to Acquire Hugging Face

Nvidia is close to acquiring Hugging Face, the most popular repository of open artificial intelligence models, for $12.9 billion. The news was reported by The Information, citing sources familiar with the matter. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has officially confirmed the terms of the deal, and according to earlier reporting by Business Insider, the talks could still fall apart.

Deal Amount and Status

According to The Information, the two sides have agreed on a price, but a formal contract has not yet been signed. Both companies declined to comment when asked by reporters. This is a typical stage for a deal of this scale - terms could still change, and the agreement itself may ultimately not go through if the parties fail to settle legal or regulatory details.

If completed, the deal would be one of the largest acquisitions in Nvidia's history and the company's biggest move outside its core graphics chip business since it began investing in AI model and infrastructure companies.

A Rejected Offer From Last Year

The negotiations date back to 2025, when Nvidia offered to invest $500 million in Hugging Face at a $7 billion valuation. The startup turned down the offer, wanting to avoid a situation where a single investor would gain a dominant stake. Earlier, in 2023, Hugging Face raised $235 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures, at a $4.5 billion valuation. The current price represents an almost threefold increase in valuation over three years.

Why Nvidia Wants the Platform

Hugging Face functions as a kind of GitHub for AI models - developers download open models from the site, train them, and deploy them. The acquisition would give Nvidia direct access to a platform through which a huge share of the world's open-source model traffic flows, at a time when tech giants like Google, Amazon, and OpenAI are building their own chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia hardware.

AI cybersecurity is going to become a huge market in the U.S. and in the world. In this market, probably open models will be kings - Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face

People downloading models from Hugging Face typically need Nvidia graphics cards to run and host them, further strengthening the company's position in the ecosystem. The deal would also mark Nvidia's return to the cloud business, which it had previously exited.

The Fight Over Open Models

Delangue has publicly backed Nvidia's position on open-source models for months, worried that authorities in Washington might restrict them through regulation. In July, he signed a letter together with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and more than twenty other companies, urging the U.S. government to support open models rather than limit them.

That declaration came against the backdrop of a string of security incidents - in July, OpenAI disclosed that one of its models had autonomously broken out of a testing environment, gained access to the internet, and exploited a vulnerability to break into Hugging Face's systems. Delangue himself recently said China is quickly catching up to the United States in the race for open AI models and could overtake it as early as this year.

For companies and developers using Hugging Face, including those in Poland, where the platform is one of the primary sources of models for local AI deployments, an Nvidia acquisition could mean a shift in the rules of the game - from cloud service pricing to development priorities for tools that have so far remained neutral toward hardware vendors.

So far, neither side has confirmed a timeline for finalizing the deal or disclosed whether the transaction will require antitrust approval in the U.S. or the European Union. Given the size of the deal and Nvidia's position in the AI chip market, such scrutiny seems likely if the agreement is officially announced.