Nvidia is said to be moving ahead with plans to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. If completed, the deal could help Nvidia become even more involved in the wider AI industry.
Hugging Face is a cloud platform where people can find, use, and share AI models, much like how GitHub works for regular software. Developers and researchers search for models, download and run them, and upload improved versions for others to use.
The deal is not final yet and could still face challenges. However, both companies seem to be moving forward, according to The Information, which cited someone familiar with the situation. Another source told CNBC that talks are happening.
Other companies, such as Salesforce, were also interested in buying Hugging Face. Nvidia has already invested in Hugging Face, along with Google and Microsoft. The company was founded in 2016.
Nvidia and other big tech companies have supported open-weight AI models instead of closed systems from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Nvidia has also released its own open models, called Nemotron. Buying Hugging Face would give Nvidia more influence in the open-model community. The deal might also help Nvidia restart its earlier efforts to build a cloud AI business, which had not gained much traction before.
Hugging Face is not yet profitable, but it is the main place for storing, downloading, and developing open-weight models. This makes it valuable even though it is not making money right now.
This deal is important for Nvidia because top AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are starting to build their own hardware to train and run models, which could make them less dependent on Nvidia’s chips. By buying Hugging Face, Nvidia could help keep more of the AI community using its hardware.
Hugging Face is mainly known for hosting large language models, but it has also started to support models for robotics and other physical AI uses. Nvidia is already strong in these areas, so the deal could create more opportunities in the future.
