Nvidia confirms acquisition of Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

Following weeks of swirling rumors, Nvidia confirmed today that it has acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The platform currently hosts three million models, one million applications utilized by over 18 million developers, and half a million datasets.

Ecosystem commitments

In a published statement, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang emphasized that Hugging Face will maintain its support for open-source and open-weight models while broadening developer access. Huang noted that the platform will remain open to the entire artificial intelligence ecosystem, allowing developers to select their preferred models, frameworks, clouds, and inference service providers without a mandatory requirement to use Nvidia compute architecture.

Hugging Face was originally founded in 2016 and has accumulated over $395 million in funding prior to this transaction. Its previous funding round occurred in 2023, raising $235 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures alongside strategic investments from companies including Google, Amazon, IBM, and Nvidia.

Leadership perspectives

Following the announcement, Hugging Face Chief Executive Officer Clem Delangue addressed the community on social media, expressing gratitude for establishing the platform as a viable alternative to closed-source application programming interfaces. Delangue explained that scaling operations further required additional compute capacity, support, collaboration, and visibility, factors that prompted discussions with Nvidia.

Huang has consistently positioned himself as an advocate for open models, recently co-signing a letter to advocate for open-weight models aimed at strengthening the competitive position of the United States in the artificial intelligence sector. Furthermore, Huang highlighted the significance of open models in critical domains such as cybersecurity, noting their utility in powering distributed, autonomous defensive systems across the global economy.