Nvidia has confirmed that it will buy the open-source AI repository Hugging Face for $12.9 billion in a move that accelerates the chipmaker’s expansion into AI software.
The deal was first reported by The Information in late August and has now been officially confirmed on Nvidia’s website.
Hugging Face is a library of over three million open-source AI models and datasets, with Nvidia
saying it is used by more than 200,000 companies.
It has an annual revenue of around $150 million, per The Information, meaning the deal values the company at around 86 times annual revenue. It is also almost triple the $4.5 billion valuation Hugging Face received in 2023 in a $235 million funding round led by Salesforce, Google and Nvidia.
Nvidia has stressed that its acquisition will not change the user experience. Hugging Face will remain an open platform for “the entire AI ecosystem,” the company said, with developers free to choose any model, framework, cloud service providers and computing platforms. In particular, Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through the platform.
In a post on the company’s blog, chief executive Jensen Huang used the acquisition as an opportunity to reiterate its commitment to open weight models.
“Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch,” he added. “They enable organisations to match the right model to the right job.
“That is how AI can advance safely, strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty, accelerate innovation, and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and Main Street businesses around the world.”
Nvidia is the largest contributor of open models and data to Hugging Face, Huang said, having released more than 500 models and 250 open data sets on the platform.
In August, the Trump administration announced that it would exclude open weight models from its voluntary federal safety testing programme, limiting scrutiny to the most advanced closed models following a meeting with companies including Nvidia.
