Nvidia to buy developer platform Hugging Face in $12.9bn deal

Nvidia’s acquisition of Hugging Face will give it direct access to platform developers use to collaborate, test and share tools. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/ReutersView image in fullscreenNvidia’s acquisition of Hugging Face will give it direct access to platform developers use to collaborate, test and share tools. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/ReutersNvidiaNvidia to buy developer platform Hugging Face in $12.9bn dealSemi-conductor giant bets that support for open AI models could offset potential slowdown in demand for chips

Nvidia will buy the popular developer platform Hugging Face for nearly $13bn, betting that support for ⁠open AI models could offset a potential slowdown in demand for the semiconductor giant’s chips.

Shares ⁠in Nvidia were ⁠slightly lower ​after the $12.93bn (£9.57bn) deal – which ranks among its biggest ever – was announced for the database of AI models on Thursday.

Hugging Face, based in New York and backed by the likes of Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Amazon, was founded in 2016 by the French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf.

Nvidia is already a major open AI player in the US with ⁠its widely used Nemotron model and vocal support for the technology.

Acquiring Hugging Face will give it direct access to a platform developers use to ⁠collaborate and test and share tools, potentially providing insight and data that could help it narrow the ​technology gap with top American and ‌Chinese labs.

“Nvidia gains visibility into customer’s preferences and the AI models they use,” said Naveen Chhabra, principal analyst at Forrester. “They can see which models are trending, what datasets customers are downloading, and the architectures that are gaining traction weeks before they hit mainstream tech news.”

Demand for open-weight models ‌has surged from businesses balking at the steep bill of deploying generative AI. Chinese companies ‌such as DeepSeek, Moonshot and Z.ai have emerged as crucial players with models that can match the best from the US in tasks including generating computer code at a lower cost.

There are fears that some US firms could become reliant on Beijing’s models even as both countries race to dominate a technology they see as crucial to their future. The Trump administration has scrambled to respond to the wave of open models from China, weighing whether to restrict their use while also worrying about stifling American businesses that have taken to using them.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, was a signatory of an open letter earlier this year from major tech firms that advocated for open models and warned against government regulation that would stifle their use. Huang pledged that Nvidia would keep Hugging Face open after acquiring it.

“Hugging ‌Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem,” said Huang, adding that his company’s chips would not be required to ​build on or deploy through Hugging Face.

Under the deal, Nvidia will pay about $11.9bn to Hugging Face investors, while offering an equity-based retention program of up to $1bn for employees who join Nvidia.