Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion

In short: Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.

What happened

Nvidia, the company best known for making the chips that power many AI systems, says it has agreed to purchase Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Hugging Face is a widely used online platform where people share AI models, datasets, and tools.

Hugging Face, founded in 2016, is often called the “GitHub for AI.” GitHub is a popular place where software developers store and share code, and Hugging Face plays a similar role for AI projects (think of it like a public library where people can publish and borrow AI building blocks).

Reports about a possible sale began in late August, before Nvidia publicly confirmed its plan to buy the company. Hugging Face was last valued at $4.5 billion in 2023, after a funding round that included Nvidia. The Information reported that Hugging Face has been bringing in around $150 million in annualized revenue, which is much smaller than the purchase price.

Why it matters

This deal could affect how AI tools are built and shared. Hugging Face is a key place for “open-source” AI, meaning many projects can be viewed, copied, and improved by anyone under certain licenses. If a major chip company owns that hub, developers and businesses will watch closely to see whether the platform stays as open and neutral as it has been, and whether Nvidia uses it to strengthen its position as other big AI firms try to build their own chips.

Source: The Verge AI