Nvidia has agreed to buy AI developer platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion as it expands beyond its core chip business.
The deal is one of Nvidia’s largest acquisitions. It gives the chipmaker direct access to a platform used by more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators.
Hugging Face hosts more than 3 million AI models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover, test, customise and deploy AI tools, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The acquisition comes as businesses look for cheaper ways to deploy AI. Open-weight models can be downloaded, customised and run on different computing systems.
That market has also seen growing competition from Chinese AI developers, including DeepSeek and Z.ai. Their lower-cost models have increased pressure on US companies to compete on both performance and price.
Nvidia moves deeper into open AI
Nvidia already supports the open AI ecosystem through models such as Nemotron. Buying Hugging Face would give it a much closer connection to developers who build, test and share AI models.
The move also comes as some of Nvidia’s biggest customers work on their own AI chips. Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are among the companies seeking to reduce their reliance on Nvidia’s processors.
That could eventually put pressure on Nvidia’s chip demand from its largest customers. Expanding into AI software, models and developer infrastructure gives the company another way to participate in the growth of AI.
Hugging Face will remain open to different models, cloud providers and hardware, according to Huang.
“Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face,” Huang said.
Nvidia will pay about $11.9 billion to Hugging Face shareholders. It will also offer an equity-based retention programme worth up to about $1 billion for employees joining Nvidia.
Deal expected to close in 2027
The acquisition is not yet complete. Nvidia expects the transaction to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions.
The two companies already work together, including on Nvidia computing services available through Hugging Face.
Founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face has grown from a developer platform into a major hub for AI models, datasets, software libraries and cloud services.
The acquisition would give Nvidia a larger role in the software layer of AI while keeping Hugging Face open to competing hardware providers.
Last modified: September 4, 2026
