GoKawiilNvidia to buy AI hub Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
Nvidia has confirmed it will acquire Hugging Face, the New York startup behind the leading platform for open-source AI models, in a deal valued at $12.9 billion. CEO Jensen Huang said the price reflected competition from other bidders, making it Nvidia's second-largest acquisition after its $20 billion purchase of Groq's assets. Hugging Face hosts millions of models and datasets used by over 200,000 companies and 18 million developers.
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The purchase shows Nvidia positioning itself beyond hardware, securing influence over the software and community layer where open-source AI development happens. Since Huang says half of Nvidia's business already depends on open models, owning the platform that hosts and distributes them gives the company leverage over both developers and rivals building on open-weight systems.
- Nvidia will pay $12.9 billion for Hugging Face, its second-largest deal ever.
- Hugging Face hosts over 3 million models and 500,000 datasets used by 200,000+ companies.
- The deal extends Nvidia's reach from chips into the open-source AI software ecosystem.
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See NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: cnbc.com — Kai Nicol-Schwarz, 2026-09-04
Published there as: “Why Nvidia's 'defensive move' to acquire Hugging Face is about much more than chips”
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