Jensen Huang
Huang is negotiating a $14B Hugging Face acquisition, defending $500B in arranged AI financing against "circular financing" critics, and locking $279B in memory supply through FY2029 while urging community ties as Texas halts data centers.
Jensen Huang is running Nvidia as chip supplier, financier, ecosystem owner, and now acquirer — betting that AI infrastructure spending keeps compounding. Nvidia is in advanced talks to buy Hugging Face for roughly $14 billion, a deal that could close this week, extending Huang's July debut on X advocating for open-weight AI models, which he called "too important to the industry and too important to the world."
The financing strategy remains the flashpoint. Huang defended roughly $50 billion in frontier AI lab investments and up to $500 billion in arranged financing against "circular financing" allegations, saying "we see it differently" and "the risk is low." He capped third-party exposure near 25% per project. The company paused several AI Compute Partnership deals and scaled back OpenAI Ohio support amid antitrust concerns, yet Huang guaranteed up to $105 billion in residual-value backing for OpenAI's Ohio leases in exchange for exclusive hosting of Nvidia's platform. He said further equity investment in OpenAI will cease because "they're going to go public."
On supply, Huang committed $279 billion through FY2029 for HBM and server DRAM from SK Hynix and Micron, up from $119 billion three months earlier, telling investors supply, not demand, is capping growth. He warned gross margins will dip to the low-70% range by end of FY2027. He set a $1 trillion revenue target for 2026-2027, anchored by SpaceX's exclusive build and roughly $700 billion in hyperscaler spend.
Huang defended Nvidia's GPU architecture against specialized NPUs and denied a China-specific LPU on the roadmap. He criticized executives who cite AI to justify layoffs, a stance shared with DeepMind's Demis Hassabis. Time excluded him from its 2026 AI 100 list after three prior appearances. He urged better community ties on data-center build-out in direct response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's moratorium, and pitched infrastructure trades as six-figure jobs even as the Home Builders Institute warns of labor draining from housing. He supports California's proposed billionaire tax, splitting with Mark Cuban, and maintains current AI valuations are justified by productivity potential.
On their plate
Nvidia is in advanced negotiations to acquire Hugging Face for roughly $14 billion ($12.9B acquisition plus $1B retention), with the deal potentially closing this week and giving Nvidia control over the primary open-source model-sharing platform. The move extends Huang's July debut on X advocating for open-weight AI models, which he called "too important to the industry and too important to the world," aligning public advocacy with Nvidia's interest in broader model availability driving chip demand.
Huang defended roughly $50 billion in frontier AI lab investments and up to $500 billion in arranged financing against circular-financing allegations, capping third-party exposure near 25% per project. He committed $279 billion through FY2029 for HBM and server DRAM from SK Hynix and Micron, up from $119 billion three months earlier, and set a $1 trillion revenue target for 2026-2027 anchored by SpaceX's exclusive $150B-$250B build and roughly $700B in hyperscaler AI-chip spend.
Huang is urging the tech industry to work better with communities on AI infrastructure build-out, framing data centers as reindustrialization that can lower national energy costs — a direct response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's data-center moratorium and his charge that the industry "dug their own grave." He is pitching AI infrastructure trades as the next wave of six-figure jobs, while the Home Builders Institute warns data-center construction is draining 300,000 skilled workers from affordable housing.
Huang is defending Nvidia's general-purpose GPU architecture against the rise of specialized NPUs, arguing the full-stack AI factory platform accelerates every model type and opening the platform so partners can connect specialized hardware to Nvidia infrastructure. He formally denied a China-specific LPU on Nvidia's roadmap, countering reports of Groq-licensed chips, consistent with his earlier statement that Nvidia had largely conceded the Chinese AI chip market to Huawei.
Huang publicly criticized executives who cite AI as justification for layoffs, arguing companies use "AI transformation" as a cover for pandemic-era over-hiring and slowing growth — a position shared with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who called replacing developers with AI "a lack of imagination." Time excluded Huang from its 2026 AI 100 list after three consecutive years of inclusion, a signal the publication sees the year's AI storylines as driven by customers and rivals rather than the GPU supplier himself.
Key relationships
Huang capped Nvidia's third-party financing exposure near 25% per project and publicly defended the company's financing structure, directly responding to Burry's warning of a "circular financing web."
Huang urged the tech industry to do a much better job working with communities on AI infrastructure, directly responding to Abbott's data-center moratorium and Abbott's charge that the industry "dug their own grave."
Huang guaranteed up to $105 billion in residual-value backing for OpenAI's Ohio data center leases in exchange for exclusive hosting of Nvidia's full-stack platform, while signaling further direct equity investment will cease because OpenAI is going public.
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