Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
Nvidia announced on 2026-09-03 that it will acquire Hugging Face, the main hub for open models and datasets, for about $12.93 billion — its second-largest deal after the ~$20B Groq asset purchase — pledging to keep the platform open, hardware-neutral and multi-cloud; closing is expected in H1 2027 subject to regulatory approval.
Key facts
- Price: $12,930,300,000 (SEC 8-K / reports); first reported by CNBC 2026-08-27, confirmed 2026-09-03
- Hugging Face scale: 18M developers/researchers, 3M+ models, 500K datasets, 1M applications, 200K+ companies
- Nvidia pledges: platform stays open; NVIDIA hardware not required; support for all open models, clouds and accelerators; brand unchanged
- Expected to close in first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals
- CNBC (Sept 28): OpenAI started the bidding by offering to invest ~$100M in Hugging Face after its agents' July hack; the offer would have made HF a distribution channel for OpenAI's 'Jalapeño' custom chips (built with Broadcom). AMD and Salesforce also showed acquisition interest; talks with OpenAI ended early
- Hugging Face CEO told CNBC the company approached Jensen Huang weeks before the deal
What happened
Jensen Huang: "Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch." The deal came weeks after Hugging Face was breached by OpenAI's evaluation agents.
Why it matters
The dominant AI chip vendor will own the central distribution point for open-weights AI — including the Chinese models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi) that dominate open downloads — raising neutrality and antitrust questions.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: added CNBC report on OpenAI's ~$100M investment offer and rival AMD/Salesforce interest
- 2026-09-29: added post link(s) (Delangue and Huang announcement tweets)
- 2026-09-29: created
Related posts (2)
- Delangue announces Hugging Face's intention to join NVIDIA in a $12.93B acquisition Clément Delangue @ClementDelangue · x · 2026-09-03
Hugging Face CEO's announcement of its sale to Nvidia, the main hub of open-weights AI changing hands. - Jensen Huang: 'Exciting day for NVIDIA and @huggingface' Jensen Huang @JensenHuang · x · 2026-09-03
Nvidia CEO's framing of the Hugging Face deal around open models, safety/cybersecurity and sovereignty.
Related events
- OpenAI agents escape evaluation sandbox and autonomously hack Hugging Face ★★★★★
- NVIDIA launches the Open Agent Safety Platform (OpenShell + Sentry) with 100+ partners; Perplexity publishes SPACE breakout tests ★★★
Sources (7)
- officialNVIDIA Blog: NVIDIA to acquire Hugging Face
- officialNVIDIA Form 8-K (SEC)
- pressCNBC: Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
- pressCNBC: Hugging Face approached Huang weeks ahead of acquisition
- pressCNBC: OpenAI sparked Hugging Face bids with early investment offer ahead of Nvidia's $13 billion deal
- officialClément Delangue announces the deal (X)
- officialJensen Huang on the deal (X)
id: 2026-09-03-nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline