Report: Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

In short: Reports say Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, but the deal is not confirmed as completed.

What happened

Reuters and CNBC report that Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. The reporting is based on unnamed people familiar with the matter, and it does not say the acquisition has formally closed.

Hugging Face is widely used as a place where people share and find AI models, datasets, and tools. Many of these are “open source,” which means the underlying code is shared publicly so others can use it and build on it (like a community cookbook where anyone can read the recipes).

The deal would also add to Nvidia’s influence beyond computer chips. Nvidia is best known for GPUs, the specialized chips many companies use to train and run AI systems. Some AI companies, including makers of closed models like Anthropic and OpenAI, have been looking at building or buying their own chips to rely less on Nvidia.

Nvidia has also been leaning into open-source software through other moves. It completed its acquisition of Run:ai and said it would open source that software. Nvidia also acquired SchedMD, which develops Slurm, a widely used open-source tool for managing computing jobs, and said it would keep Slurm vendor-neutral.

Why it matters

Hugging Face is often described as vendor-neutral, meaning it is not tied to one company’s hardware. If Nvidia owns it, that could help fund and grow open-source AI, but it could also put more control over a popular “distribution hub” for AI tools into the hands of the biggest chip supplier.

Source: NYTimes