New Delhi: One of Nvidia’s largest acquisitions yet is currently under contract: the AI development platform Hugging Face is buying a stake in Nvidia from the company for $12.93 billion. The move reflects Nvidia’s move from chip-maker to a significant player in open-source AI and its interest in expanding its footprint beyond its chip business.
Hugging Face is the most popular platform which is used by AI developers and researchers to find, build, test and share AI models, datasets and apps. This platform has been emerged as a crucial element in the open-source AI community, by enabling developers to collaborate and enhance AI solutions.
Nvidia claims that Hugging Face is used by more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators. It also going to supports more than 3 million AI models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million apps. Over 200,000 other businesses use its services too.
This recent agreement features a $11.9 billion payment to the Hugging Face shareholders and a $1 billion up to $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for the Hugging Face workers. The transaction is likely to close in the first half of 2027, subject to the regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
The deal would give Nvidia a direct access to millions of AI developers. The developers could need computing power and powerful processors to run their AI models in the future, providing them with a new customer base to Nvidia.
The company is also facing a dynamic AI market. Its heaviest users, such as the big technology firms are developing their own Artificial Intelligence chips to lessen reliance on Nvidia. Meanwhile, open system AI systems are gaining popularity due to their ability to provide companies with additional flexibility and sometimes competitive price tags, when compared to proprietary AI systems.
Hugging Face will remain as free and open platform, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated. Developers will have the choice of leveraging various AI models, software platforms and frameworks, cloud providers and computing platforms. The platform will not require any Nvidia computing technology.
The purchase represents another significant stride within Nvidia’s overall approach to bolstering its presence in the rapidly expanding AI sector, extending beyond hardware to software and developer ecosystems driving the next generation of AI.
