Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face for $11.9 billion

Nvidia is buying Hugging Face, one of the most important platforms in the open-source AI ecosystem, in an $11.9 billion deal that gives the chipmaker a much bigger role in how models and datasets are distributed to developers.

As part of the acquisition, Nvidia has also set aside up to $1 billion in stock-based incentives to retain key Hugging Face employees. Investors reacted positively to the deal, with Nvidia shares gaining about 2% to $227.87 in New York and its market capitalization climbing above $5.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg.

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Hugging Face is expected to retain the open platform that made it a central part of the AI developer community. Nvidia says developers will remain free to upload and download models, share datasets and build software for competing hardware rather than being pushed exclusively toward Nvidia chips.

Jensen Huang has framed that openness as important to the wider AI industry. Writing on X, the Nvidia CEO argued that open models play a role in strengthening cybersecurity and accelerating innovation, while helping prevent advanced AI from becoming concentrated among a small number of companies with closed systems.

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The purchase also pushes Nvidia further beyond the hardware business that made it the dominant supplier of AI chips. The company has been building out its position across the broader AI stack, including a $6 billion agreement with coding startup Poolside and the roughly $20 billion acquisition of key assets from chipmaker Groq.

Hugging Face was founded in 2016 and has since become a major destination for developers looking to publish, discover and work with open AI models and datasets. It was valued at $4.5 billion just three years ago, putting Nvidia’s acquisition price at more than twice its previous valuation. The platform has also recently attracted scrutiny from security researchers after an OpenAI model undergoing testing inadvertently compromised protections around some of Hugging Face’s internal systems.