Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisition

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Nvidia is reportedly on the verge of acquiring Hugging Face — the dominant platform for hosting and sharing open-source AI models — for approximately $12.9 billion. The deal was first reported by The Information, citing a source familiar with the matter. Business Insider added that no signed agreement exists yet and talks could still fall through, though Nvidia's silence on the report is notable given the company typically rebuts inaccurate stories quickly. The strategic logic centers on Nvidia's chip empire. Every major closed-source AI lab — OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Anthropic — is now building custom AI chips to cut dependence on Nvidia hardware. A thriving open-source model ecosystem gives developers alternatives to those proprietary labs, keeping demand for Nvidia GPUs intact regardless of which AI approach wins. Nvidia has already invested tens of billions of dollars into open-source AI model development, making Hugging Face a natural strategic extension. Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue has been publicly aligned with Nvidia's open-source position throughout 2026, co-signing a letter with Jensen Huang and 24 other companies urging Washington to support rather than restrict open-weight models. That letter came amid growing debate over whether Chinese labs like Moonshot AI were gaining a competitive edge with cheaper open-source alternatives. The acquisition would also mark Nvidia's return to the cloud and software platform space it has largely avoided.