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The pending acquisition would bring a major developer platform inside Nvidia, while the company promises users can still choose competing models, clouds and computing hardware.
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Nvidia’s planned $12.93 billion acquisition of Hugging Face would put a major open-model hub under the control of a leading AI-chip supplier. The deal is not expected to close until the first half of 2027 and includes $1 billion for employee retention. Nvidia has promised continued support for competing models, cloud providers, inference services, and accelerators, with no requirement to use Nvidia hardware. The practical test will be whether those neutrality commitments survive integration after closing.
Hugging Face reports 18 million users, 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications on its platform.
More than 200,000 companies use Hugging Face to discover, evaluate, customize, and deploy AI.
Nvidia says Hugging Face will retain its brand and team while supporting open-source and open-weight models from all builders.
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, turning a reported deal into a confirmed transaction. The key condition for the platform’s users is Nvidia’s pledge that they will still be able to select their own models, clouds, inference services and computing platforms.
The acquisition remains pending and is expected to close in the first half of 2027, according to a securities filing. The price includes $1 billion in equity for a Hugging Face employee-retention plan, The Associated Press reported, citing comments Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made to CNBC.
Nvidia says Hugging Face will remain open to the wider AI ecosystem, and that Nvidia hardware will not be required to build on or deploy through it. It also says the platform will continue supporting open-source and open-weight models from all model builders, alongside multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment.
Nvidia says this community uses Hugging Face to share models, datasets and applications.
The company also cites 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications on the platform.
Nvidia says companies use Hugging Face to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI.
Nvidia frames the deal as a way to scale Hugging Face, strengthen its infrastructure and broaden access for developers and institutions. It already says it has released more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets on Hugging Face, and calls itself the platform’s largest contributor of open models and data.
Open models allow organizations to download and customize a model for their own purposes, rather than use only proprietary AI services. Nvidia’s commitments preserve that choice on paper; after closing, the consequential measure will be whether third-party models, clouds, inference providers and accelerators retain the support Nvidia has promised.
Nvidia says Hugging Face’s team will join the company while keeping the Hugging Face brand. For a platform built around broad model and infrastructure choice, that operating record—not the acquisition announcement—will determine how the new ownership is experienced by its users.
Story updates
Nvidia has the chips, the cash, and now a growing collection of bets across the AI stack from Hugging Face to MediaTek. So why does everyone keep sidling up to Nvidia? @EquityPod digs into what the company understands that its competitors don't.
Editorial analysis
Nvidia is buying a shared layer of the AI ecosystem, not simply adding another software product. Its promise not to require Nvidia compute addresses the central tension directly: Hugging Face serves builders using different models, clouds and accelerator types, while Nvidia sells one of those infrastructure options. The meaningful test will come in product decisions after the deal closes—especially whether competing inference providers and non-Nvidia hardware retain equal practical support as Nvidia adds engineering capacity to the platform.
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