WORLD
Nvidia chief seals $13-billion Hugging Face deal to back open-source AI
- IBJ Bureau
- Sep 04, 2026
Nvidia Corp has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) startup Hugging Face in a transaction valued at about $13 billion, adding a popular software platform to the chip giant’s AI empire.
The price includes an equity-based retention programme of as much as $1 billion for Hugging Face employees who join Nvidia.
Nvidia has touted the deal as a way to protect open-source AI developers who rely on Hugging Face to share software and data that can be freely used by anyone.
Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has emerged as a strong advocate for open-source AI models as a means of keeping the technology broadly available and preventing it from becoming concentrated in the hands of a few massive players.
OpenAI, Anthropic and other big AI developers mostly rely on closed models that are proprietary.
In buying Hugging Face, Nvidia has vowed to keep the platform open.
“Open models strengthen safety and cyber security, accelerate innovation and diffusion and enable sovereignty,” Mr Huang has said in a post on the X.
“Nvidia is going to be a great home for Hugging Face, its community and the future of open models,” he adds.
Still, Nvidia’s move raises its own questions about the concentration of power in AI.
It is already the biggest company in the industry, and acquiring Hugging Face will only add to its influence.
A previous attempt to buy chip designer Arm was opposed by regulators because of the sway it would give Nvidia.
Report By
View Reporter News