Nvidia reportedly acquiring Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

Nvidia reportedly acquiring Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

Thu, August 27, 2026 at 2:10 PM GMT+3 2 min read

• NVDA -4.57%

Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to CNBC, citing a report from The Information. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face responded to requests for comment.

Hugging Face is an open-source hub where developers can build, experiment with, and distribute AI models and tools. Buying it would extend Nvidia's reach beyond AI chips into the software and model ecosystem. Deal talks began after Hugging Face received acquisition interest from another suitor, according to CNBC.

A signed agreement has not yet been reached and the deal could still fall apart, according to TechCrunch. Business Insider reported last week that Hugging Face had been working with a bank to evaluate bidders' interest in the company.

The reported price represents a steep jump from Hugging Face's last known valuation. Its most recent fundraise, a $235 million round in 2023 that put the company's value at $4.5 billion, drew backing from Salesforce Ventures as lead investor alongside Alphabet's GV, IBM Ventures, and Nvidia, according to TechCrunch. Nvidia's bid to acquire Hugging Face follows a rejected offer: the chipmaker proposed a $500 million investment late last year that would have placed the company's valuation at $7 billion, which Hugging Face declined. The company was generating roughly $150 million a year in revenue.

The acquisition would also give Nvidia a potential path back into cloud computing. Because Hugging Face already lets developers rent compute to run their models, bringing it in-house could hand Nvidia a ready-made outlet for offloading surplus cloud capacity to those same users.

Nvidia reported second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion on Wednesday, more than doubling from a year earlier. After the results were released, Nvidia shares climbed over 4% in extended trading. Among its other recent activity, the company struck a $20 billion licensing agreement with AI chip startup Groq.

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue has been a public supporter of open-source AI models. Speaking to CNBC earlier this month, Delangue said: "AI cybersecurity is going to become a huge market in the U.S. and in the world. In this market, probably open models will be kings."