Nvidia to Acquire AI-Dev Platform ‘Hugging Face’ in US$12.93bn Deal

Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence development platform Hugging Face in a deal valued at approximately $12.93bn, significantly expanding the chipmaker’s presence across the open AI ecosystem.

Under the agreement, Nvidia will pay approximately $11.9bn to Hugging Face shareholders, subject to adjustments, while offering up to another $1bn through an equity-based retention programme for Hugging Face employees who join Nvidia.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

The acquisition would be the second largest in Nvidia’s history after its deal with Groq. Another landmark deal by Nvidia includes the acquisition of networking technology company Mellanox, originally announced at an enterprise value of approximately $6.9bn and completed in April 2020 for a transaction value of around $7bn. Mellanox subsequently became an important part of Nvidia’s expansion from graphics and computing chips into broader data-centre infrastructure.

Hugging Face Has Become a Major AI Development Hub

Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has evolved into one of the most widely used platforms for developing, distributing and deploying artificial intelligence models.

According to Nvidia, the platform is now used by more than 18mn developers, researchers and creators and hosts more than:

• 3mn AI models
• 500,000 datasets
• 1mn AI applications
• 200,000 companies using its platform and services

Hugging Face is particularly important to the development of open-source and open-weight AI. Unlike fully proprietary AI systems, open-weight models make their trained parameters available for developers to download and, depending on their licences, customise and deploy on their own infrastructure.

The platform has consequently become an important distribution point for models developed by technology companies, research institutions, start-ups and independent AI developers.

Nvidia said Hugging Face will continue to operate as an open platform, allowing developers to choose their preferred AI models, software frameworks, cloud services and computing hardware. Nvidia hardware will not be required to develop or deploy AI through Hugging Face, and the platform is expected to continue supporting competing silicon providers.

Valuation Has Risen Sharply Since 2023

The acquisition price represents a substantial increase from Hugging Face’s valuation only three years ago. In August 2023, the company raised $235mn in a Series D funding round at a valuation of $4.5bn. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures and included investments from Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and IBM.

Nvidia had already been looking to deepen its financial relationship with Hugging Face before pursuing an acquisition. The Financial Times reported that Hugging Face rejected a $500mn investment proposal from Nvidia in 2025, partly because the company wanted to avoid becoming overly dependent on a single major investor.

The new agreement effectively values the business at almost three times the valuation attached to its 2023 funding round.

Nvidia Expands Beyond AI Hardware

The acquisition comes as Nvidia continues to use its growing financial scale to broaden its position across the global AI industry.

While the company remains best known for designing the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run many advanced AI systems, it has increasingly expanded into networking, software, AI models, cloud infrastructure and investments in AI start-ups.

Nvidia reported revenue of $96.2bn for its second quarter of fiscal 2027, an increase of 106 per cent year-on-year. Its Data Center division generated $89bn, up 117 per cent from the previous year and representing the overwhelming majority of the company’s quarterly revenue.

Hugging Face adds another layer to that ecosystem by providing Nvidia with a major platform through which developers discover, test, customise and distribute AI models.

Nvidia has also been developing its own open-model portfolio, including its Nemotron family, while investing in companies involved in AI models and the computing infrastructure required to run them.

The acquisition will now face regulatory review before completion. Nvidia has formally committed to maintaining Hugging Face’s open model ecosystem and continuing support for models, datasets and computing platforms from across the wider AI industry.