Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

Nvidia announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, as the chipmaking giant seeks to diversify its presence in the AI sector. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the deal, which was first reported by US media last month. Huang told CNBC, “The $12.9 billion price tag was worth every penny.”

Founded in New York in 2016 by three French entrepreneurs, Hugging Face, whose name is inspired by an emoji, describes itself as “an AI community building the future.” The company develops open-source models that can be downloaded and modified, in contrast to closed models offered by competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Huang affirmed that Nvidia will not change Hugging Face’s core model through the acquisition. In a statement, Nvidia said the AI platform boasts more than 18 million users who have created over three million models and more than one million applications. Clem Delang, co-founder of Hugging Face, stated that he, his co-founders, and the entire company team will continue to work.