Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
The chipmaker says the model hub will stay open to every framework, cloud and compute platform, with closing expected in the first half of 2027.
Nvidia confirmed on Thursday that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, the model-hosting platform often described as a GitHub for AI developers, for about $12.9 billion. TechCrunch put the figure at $12.93 billion. Nvidia also filed a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reporting an event dated September 2, 2026. The Register reports the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. Hugging Face hosts three million models, one million applications used by more than 18 million developers, and half a million datasets. Founded in 2016, it has raised over $395 million, with its last round of $235 million in 2023, according to Crunchbase figures cited by TechCrunch. In a blog post, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Hugging Face "will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem" and that "Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face." He noted Nvidia has published more than 500 models and 250 open datasets on the platform. The deal matters because open foundation models and the applications built on them drive demand for Nvidia's accelerators and software. Owning a primary distribution channel for those models brings Nvidia closer to the workloads that run on its hardware, and TechCrunch reported the company could package unused capacity with Hugging Face's offering for enterprise customers.