Nvidia’s Hugging Face Acquisition Is a $12.9 Billion Bet on Open-Source AI
The long-rumored deal will give the chip giant access to—and help it promote—a huge repository of open-source AI models and data sets.
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face , which makes online developer tools and maintains a massive library of open-source data sets, for nearly $13 billion. While the deal had been rumored for weeks, the companies made it official Thursday morning.
The deal signals Nvidia’s seriousness about being steeped in the software side of generative AI development as well as in infrastructure. Nvidia already offers customers a suite of free, customizable open-weights AI models, known as Nemotron. As part of its announcement, Nvidia committed to maintaining Hugging Face’s current open standards, suggesting that the chipmaker is positioning itself as an even greater resource for developers looking to access cutting-edge, nonproprietary tools.
The move also underscores Nvidia’s position that open-weights models are better for the tech industry than closed, proprietary AI models like those developed by OpenAI and Anthropic . Earlier this month, Nvidia rallied more than 80 companies to sign an open letter asking the US government to defend open-weight AI models. Nvidia also launched an initiative called SAFE, or Shared AI Findings Exchange, that encouraged tech companies to “confidentially collect and analyze AI incidents and near misses, identify recurring control failures and publish evidence-based operating recommendations that reduce systemic risk.”
“Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in the press release announcing the deal. “AI advances faster when people can build together.”
Nvidia’s embrace of open-source software and open-weights AI might seem like an abrupt turn, especially given that CUDA, the software layer for its highly coveted GPUs, is itself proprietary. But as frontier AI labs and some of the large hyperscalers, including Amazon and Meta, seek to build their own custom chips, Nvidia has begun to position itself as a maker of not just GPUs but also high-performance CPUs, and has widened its software offerings in order to keep developers building on Nvidia’s platforms.
Business Insider previously reported that the two companies were in talks, and The Information later reported that a deal had been reached.
