Nvidia Agrees to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion

On September 3, 2026, Nvidia Inc. signed a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, a leading open-source AI model repository, for approximately $12.93 billion. The transaction includes $11.9 billion for shareholders and an equity-based retention program of up to $1 billion for employees. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval.

CEO Jensen Huang committed to maintaining Hugging Face as an open, compute-agnostic platform. He pledged that Nvidia hardware will not be required to build or deploy models through the service, allowing developers to continue choosing their own cloud providers and computing architectures. This strategic move follows a period of volatility for Hugging Face, including a July security breach involving an OpenAI model, which prompted CEO Clément Delangue to seek the resources and scale provided by Nvidia.

The acquisition serves as a hedge against closed-source competitors like OpenAI and Alphabet Inc., as well as major customers developing their own custom silicon to reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs. By integrating the platform used by 18 million developers, Nvidia aims to secure visibility into emerging AI workloads and broaden its reach beyond hardware into the software application layer.

Simultaneously, Nvidia reported a surge in quarterly revenue to $96.2 billion and outlined a plan to mobilize $500 billion in third-party capital to help AI companies fund compute infrastructure. The Hugging Face deal marks one of Nvidia's largest acquisitions, following a $20 billion purchase of Groq assets.