Nvidia has officially agreed to acquire open-source artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, a landmark deal that signals the chipmaker’s intent to move further up the AI stack beyond its core hardware business, the company announced Thursday.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the deal in a blog post Thursday, writing that Hugging Face will “remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem” under the new ownership. “Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide,” Huang wrote.
The transaction had been widely anticipated after The Information reported on it last week, according to CNBC.
Hugging Face says it initiated talks
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box” that his company approached Nvidia over the summer about a potential deal — “and a few weeks later, here we are.”
“During the summer, I think we realized that Hugging Face and open source AI in general was at the turning point, and that it needed more, more resources, more scale, more visibility,” Delangue said. He explained that he reached out first because Nvidia was “a perfect home” for Hugging Face, and that discussions moved quickly to close the deal.
Second-largest acquisition in Nvidia history
The Hugging Face purchase ranks as Nvidia’s second-largest acquisition on record, trailing only its $20 billion purchase of assets from chipmaker Groq in December, according to CNBC. Prior to that deal, Nvidia’s biggest was its roughly $7 billion acquisition of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox in 2019.
Nvidia has climbed to become the world’s most valuable company, propelled by insatiable demand for its graphics processing units, which have powered the generative AI boom. The Hugging Face acquisition represents a significant bet on a widely used AI platform, underscoring that Nvidia sees itself as more than just a chip supplier.
Security concerns and the case for open source
Hugging Face recently found itself at the center of a hacking incident that heightened concerns about the rapid evolution of powerful AI and cybersecurity tools. Delangue, who has long championed open-source models, blamed engineering mistakes for the attack and said his company used an Nvidia version of a Chinese open model to resolve it.
Delangue told CNBC on Thursday that the breach underscored the importance of open models and reinforced the need for his company to “double down” on the spread of open-source AI.
Huang echoed that sentiment, arguing that open-source environments give security defenders an “asymmetric advantage” over attackers. “When I say asymmetric capability, there are way more people who are protecting than there are people who are attacking,” he explained. “And so, the benefit of having the community come together with open models, so that they can collaborate all transparently with each other, gives the defenders an asymmetric advantage.”
Huang also spoke to CNBC about the broader moment for AI, saying, “We’re at the beginning of an industrial revolution.”
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-agrees-to-buy-hugging-face-for-almost-13-billion-ai-expansion.html
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