Nvidia's $12.9B Hugging Face Deal Is Its Largest Ever

Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9B, its largest acquisition ever, keeping the platform open.

Nvidia announced a definitive agreement to buy AI developer platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, the company's largest acquisition to date. CNBC reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue appeared together on Squawk Box to discuss how the deal came about and why open models matter greatly to Nvidia's business. Investor's Business Daily notes that Nvidia stock rose only a fraction on the announcement.

Nvidia's biggest-ever acquisition is not a chipmaker or a datacenter operator but a model-hosting hub often described as a GitHub for AI developers. The Register highlights the tension at the heart of the deal: a GPU giant buying one of the main open-model platforms while promising 'not to squeeze too hard.' Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem, Huang said, and Nvidia compute will not be required — a striking pledge given the temptation to steer the hub toward its own hardware.

Huang said in a statement that Hugging Face will remain open to the entire AI ecosystem and that Nvidia compute will not be required, according to Seeking Alpha. In a blog post cited by Investor's Business Daily, Huang said: 'Together, we will scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.' Delangue joined Huang on CNBC's Squawk Box to make the case for the partnership, underscoring that open foundation models and the applications built on them drive demand for the accelerators and software Nvidia sells.

Open foundation models and the applications built on them drive demand for the accelerators and software Nvidia sells, so owning one of the main platforms through which developers discover and distribute those models brings the GPU giant closer to the workloads running on its hardware. Nvidia said the purchase will give Hugging Face additional resources and support developers building, sharing, and deploying open models and applications. It pledged to allow model makers, developers, and users to access models and datasets of their choosing, keeping the hub neutral even as it gains a new owner.

For developers, the promise that Nvidia compute will not be required is the key reassurance: Hugging Face's value depends on remaining a neutral home for models built for many kinds of hardware. For investors, the market reaction was muted — Investor's Business Daily reports Nvidia stock rose only a fraction on Thursday, with futures mixed as oil prices rose elsewhere in the market. At nearly $13 billion, the deal is Nvidia's largest acquisition and a major capital commitment to the open-model ecosystem rather than to chips alone.

The Register reports that the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. That timeline leaves roughly a year and a half for antitrust review and for competitors to respond to Nvidia's expanded position in the AI stack. Nvidia said it will update stakeholders as the deal progresses, and The Register notes the story is still developing. Until closing, Hugging Face is expected to continue operating as an open platform serving the entire AI ecosystem.