Nvidia agrees $12.9bn deal to acquire AI platform Hugging Face

Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial-intelligence developer platform Hugging Face in a $12.93 billion deal announced on Thursday, September 3, 2026.

The transaction would give the semiconductor company ownership of a widely used platform where developers share, test and deploy AI models, datasets and software tools. Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf and is backed by investors including Intel, AMD and Amazon.

Under the announced terms, Nvidia will pay about $11.9 billion to Hugging Face investors and establish an equity-based retention programme worth up to $1 billion for employees who join Nvidia.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said Hugging Face would remain open to the broader AI ecosystem and that developers would not be required to use Nvidia chips to build or deploy through the platform.

The acquisition expands Nvidia’s position beyond the processors that power many AI systems. Hugging Face provides a central hub for open models and gives developers access to datasets, libraries and cloud services used in AI application development.

Demand for open-weight models has grown as companies seek less expensive alternatives to proprietary systems. Nvidia has supported that segment through its Nemotron model family, while Chinese developers including DeepSeek, Moonshot and Z.ai have increased competition with lower-cost offerings.

The deal comes as large Nvidia customers including Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft develop their own chips, potentially reducing their reliance on Nvidia hardware over time. Completion of the acquisition remains subject to the applicable transaction process and regulatory requirements.