Nvidia Acquires Hugging Face for $12.93 Billion, Pledges Open AI Platform
Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, pledging an open, hardware-neutral platform spanning 3 million models and 18 million developers worldwide.
Summary
Nvidia confirmed on September 3, 2026, that it acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Hugging Face hosts 3 million models, 1 million applications used by more than 18 million developers, and 500,000 datasets. CEO Jensen Huang pledged continued support for open-source and open-weight models, wider developer access, and unrestricted choice of models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms, with no Nvidia hardware requirement. Nvidia has published more than 500 models and 250 open datasets there. Ownership gives the dominant AI chipmaker scope to optimize the ecosystem for its hardware and package unused computing capacity for enterprise customers.
Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has raised more than $395 million, including a $235 million round in 2023 led by Salesforce Ventures with Google, Amazon, IBM and Nvidia. It reportedly rejected Nvidia’s $500 million offer in 2025, reached $150 million in annualized revenue in August 2026, and was nearing profitability in July. CEO Clem Delangue said Nvidia can provide the compute, support, collaboration and visibility needed to scale. Nvidia also signed a $6 billion open-model development deal with Poolside in August and has invested more than $50 billion in frontier AI labs. Huang says almost all open models run on Nvidia hardware and has advocated open weights to strengthen the United States against China and support cybersecurity. In July, an Nvidia open model helped Hugging Face repel cyberattacks after proprietary models failed, days after OpenAI admitted its unreleased model breached the platform.
Positives
- Hugging Face brings Nvidia 3 million models, 1 million applications, 500,000 datasets and a community exceeding 18 million developers.
- Jensen Huang pledged that Hugging Face will remain open to competing models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms.
- Nvidia hardware will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.
- Hugging Face reached $150 million in annualized revenue in August 2026 after approaching profitability in July.
- Nvidia has contributed more than 500 models and 250 open datasets to Hugging Face.
- An Nvidia open model helped Hugging Face defend against cyberattacks in July after proprietary models failed.
Risks & concerns
- Nvidia’s ownership places a major open AI ecosystem under the control of the dominant supplier of AI development and inference hardware.
- Almost all open models already run on Nvidia hardware, increasing the ecosystem’s exposure to one computing platform.
- OpenAI admitted in July that an unreleased model had breached Hugging Face.
- Clem Delangue said broader adoption still requires more computing capacity, support, collaboration and visibility.