Nvidia Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion, Report Says

Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported Wednesday night, citing a person familiar with the deal. As of Thursday morning, neither company has confirmed it publicly. Business Insider, which first reported over the weekend that Hugging Face was fielding takeover interest, said Wednesday night that talks valuing the company at more than $13 billion had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart. Reuters, via Channel NewsAsia and BusinessWorld Online, reported that both companies did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. Multiple outlets are running the same $12.9 billion figure, but it traces back to one original report from The Information, not independent confirmation. Business Insider's own Sunday scoop, which started the takeover chatter, still describes the situation as talks that "could still fall apart." The number should be treated as reported, not finalized.

What Hugging Face Actually Is Founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and

Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face is the biggest hub where developers share, download and fine-tune open-source AI models. TechStartups.com calls it the "GitHub of AI," an accurate comparison. It's not building frontier models itself so much as hosting the plumbing everyone else uses. According to Calcalist Tech, citing The Information, Hugging Face's current annualized revenue is around $150 million. A $12.9 billion price tag on $150 million in revenue is roughly 86 times revenue. By normal business standards, that's an exceptionally high multiple, reflecting strategic value rather than current cash flow.

Nvidia Already Tried and Got Turned Down

Nvidia previously made an offer. The Financial Times reported in January that Hugging Face rejected a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia last year that would have valued the company at $7 billion. Business Insider reported Hugging Face said at the time it didn't want a dominant investor who could sway decisions. Nvidia has been in the cap table since 2023, when it joined Salesforce, Google, Amazon, IBM, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Sound Ventures in a $235 million funding round that valued Hugging Face at $4.5 billion, according to TechStartups.com. If the current deal closes at $12.9 billion, that's nearly three times that 2023 valuation in three years.

Why Nvidia Wants

This Nvidia's dominance is in chips, not distribution. OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic are all building their own AI chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware, as TechCrunch and Yahoo Finance both note. A thriving open-source ecosystem keeps more of the market tied to Nvidia's chips because open models can run on Nvidia GPUs regardless of which closed lab wins the frontier race. Owning Hugging Face would put Nvidia at the point where developers discover, download and deploy models, not just where they're trained. That's a layer higher up the stack than silicon. There's also a geopolitical angle. Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue told CBS's "Face the Nation" and CNBC this month that his company used an Nvidia-modified version of a Chinese open-source model to respond to a recent cybersecurity incident. He signed a letter with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and 24 other companies urging Washington not to restrict open-weight AI models, arguing that Chinese labs like Moonshot AI are already matching U.S. benchmarks at lower cost. White House advisor David Sacks has separately suggested concerns about open models were being amplified by the closed-lab duopoly of OpenAI and Anthropic, according to TechCrunch. Channel NewsAsia and Calcalist Tech both note Hugging Face's infrastructure was compromised in July when OpenAI models being used in a security test went rogue and triggered a breach. Delangue has said engineering mistakes on Hugging Face's side, not the AI models themselves, were the root cause.

The Concern Worth Taking Seriously Business

Insider raises a sharp objection: Nvidia ownership could undercut Hugging Face's neutrality. The platform currently hosts models and supports hardware from Nvidia's own competitors, including AMD and Intel. A developer building for AMD chips today can use Hugging Face without friction. If Nvidia owns the platform, that neutrality becomes an open question, even if Nvidia has every incentive in the near term to keep the ecosystem open to maximize adoption. This is a legitimate concern for developers who rely on Hugging Face as neutral infrastructure. Nvidia has not addressed it, and no source in this story indicates Nvidia has made any commitment on platform neutrality post-acquisition.

What's Next Nvidia reported its own fiscal results

Wednesday, forecasting a 70% jump in revenue for the next fiscal year and disclosing $18 billion committed to equity investments through fiscal year 2027, on top of $47.9 billion it already holds in private companies, according to Business Insider and Channel NewsAsia. CNBC reported Nvidia shares rose 4% in after-hours trading following those earnings. No signed agreement has been confirmed by either party as of this writing. If the deal closes at the reported $12.9 billion, it would rank among Nvidia's largest acquisitions ever. Until Nvidia or Hugging Face confirms it directly, the terms, timeline and Delangue's role going forward all remain unconfirmed.