Nvidia Confirms $13 Billion Deal To Acquire Open-Weight AI Platform Hugging Face Amid Open-Source AI Push

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nvidia Corp. confirmed Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, one of the world’s most widely used platforms for sharing and deploying open-source artificial intelligence models, in a deal valued at roughly $13 billion, extending the chipmaker’s push into the AI software and model ecosystem.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face on Sept. 2. The transaction includes an approximately $11.9 billion purchase price payable to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to certain adjustments, along with an equity-based retention program of up to approximately $1.0 billion for Hugging Face employees joining Nvidia. The total deal value has been widely reported at $12.93 billion. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Hugging Face operates a platform and community for developing, sharing and deploying open-source models, datasets and applications. According to Nvidia, more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators currently use the platform to share more than 3 million models, while more than 200,000 companies use Hugging Face to discover and deploy AI tools. The platform additionally hosts roughly 500,000 datasets and around 1 million applications, according to figures cited by TechCrunch.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang framed the acquisition as an extension of the company’s broader commitment to keeping AI development open and accessible, rather than as an effort to control or restrict how developers use the platform going forward.

“Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide,” Huang wrote in a statement announcing the deal.

Huang emphasized that Nvidia intends to preserve Hugging Face’s open, vendor-neutral character even under new ownership, addressing concerns that the acquisition might steer developers toward exclusively using Nvidia’s own computing hardware.

“Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem,” Huang said. “Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want and the computing platforms they want. Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.”

Nvidia’s SEC filing echoed that commitment in more formal terms, stating that the company has committed to keep Hugging Face’s platform open, “consistent with Hugging Face’s existing practices,” and that under this commitment, Hugging Face would continue to permit model makers, developers and users to upload and download models and datasets of their choosing, while continuing to support hardware from other silicon vendors beyond Nvidia’s own chips.

Huang also pointed to Nvidia’s existing contributions to the Hugging Face platform as evidence of the company’s long-standing support for open AI development, noting that Nvidia has released more than 500 models and 250 open datasets through the platform, making it the largest single contributor of open models and data to Hugging Face to date.

Nvidia enterprise computing general manager Justin Boitano addressed the strategic rationale behind the deal during a call following the announcement, according to a Yahoo Finance report, indicating the company’s belief in the continued importance of open-model ecosystems to the broader AI industry’s development.

The deal comes roughly a year after Hugging Face turned down an earlier acquisition offer from Nvidia, reportedly worth around $500 million, in order to maintain its independence as a standalone company, according to reporting from the Financial Times. Hugging Face had more recently been generating approximately $150 million in annualized revenue, according to a report from The Information published last month, with company co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue telling TechCrunch in a July interview that the platform’s growth rate was helping it move “close to profitability” even before the Nvidia deal was finalized.

Huang has been an outspoken proponent of open-weight AI models throughout the past year, including authoring an essay in July advocating for open models as a strategic asset for the United States in its broader AI competition with rivals including China. Huang has argued that widespread global adoption of open-weight models developed and hosted through platforms like Hugging Face strengthens American technological influence over the international AI ecosystem, a position he reiterated in Thursday’s announcement of the Hugging Face deal.

Thursday’s acquisition adds to a series of recent moves by Nvidia to deepen its position across the broader AI technology stack, extending well beyond its core business of designing computing chips. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia struck a $6 billion deal with coding startup Poolside to help develop open AI models. During its most recent earnings call, Nvidia disclosed that it has invested more than $50 billion into various AI infrastructure and ecosystem partnerships. The company has also separately committed to partnering with multiple Wall Street investment firms to deploy more than $500 billion in third-party capital toward the broader buildout of AI infrastructure.

Market reaction to Thursday’s confirmation was modestly positive, with Nvidia shares gaining close to 2% during the first hour of Thursday’s trading session, according to Yahoo Finance. Analyst commentary following the announcement characterized the deal’s price tag as a relatively modest expenditure relative to Nvidia’s overall financial scale. Speaking to Yahoo Finance, one analyst identified as Doran noted that Nvidia’s free cash flow is projected to reach nearly $200 billion for its fiscal year 2027, characterizing the roughly $13 billion purchase price as “not a big bite” relative to the company’s overall balance sheet.

That same analyst suggested the acquisition reflects Nvidia’s effort to diversify its business ahead of an eventual moderation in chip demand growth, even as current demand for Nvidia’s core hardware products remains extremely strong. “Right now, chip … demand is huge, but they are positioning themselves for the day when that will slow down,” the analyst said, adding that such a slowdown “still looks like it’s far in the future. But that will happen at some point.”

The Hugging Face acquisition follows Nvidia’s participation earlier this week at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Huang and other technology leaders addressed broader questions surrounding AI’s economic impact and infrastructure requirements. With the deal now confirmed and expected to close within the first half of 2027, Nvidia’s move to bring one of the AI industry’s most widely used open-source platforms under its ownership marks one of the company’s most significant acquisitions to date, further cementing its expanding influence across both the hardware and software layers of the global AI ecosystem.