Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, marking a major expansion beyond its core chip business and strengthening its position across the broader AI ecosystem.

The deal would give Nvidia ownership of one of the world’s most important platforms for discovering, sharing and deploying open AI models.

Under the agreement, around $11.9 billion will go to Hugging Face shareholders, while Nvidia has also set aside an equity-based retention package worth up to $1 billion for employees who remain with the company after the acquisition.

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

Why Hugging Face Matters

Hugging Face has become a major hub for AI developers, researchers and companies.

The platform has more than 18 million users and hosts over 3 million AI models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies also use Hugging Face to discover, customize and deploy artificial intelligence models.

For Nvidia, the acquisition provides something beyond hardware sales — direct access to one of the largest AI developer communities in the world.

Nvidia says Hugging Face will remain an open platform after the acquisition. Developers will still be able to use different AI models, cloud providers and computing hardware, including systems that do not rely on Nvidia chips.

That commitment could be important because Hugging Face’s popularity has largely been built on giving developers flexibility instead of locking them into a single AI ecosystem.

Nvidia Pushes Deeper Into AI

Nvidia is already heavily involved with Hugging Face and says it is the platform’s largest contributor of open models and data, with more than 500 models and 250 datasets published on the service.

The acquisition comes as Nvidia’s biggest customers, including major technology companies, increasingly develop their own AI chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware.

Buying Hugging Face gives Nvidia another way to maintain its influence.

Instead of only supplying GPUs used to train artificial intelligence models, Nvidia would now own a major platform where millions of developers find the models, datasets and tools used to build AI applications.

Hugging Face was previously valued at around $4.5 billion, making Nvidia’s nearly $13 billion offer a significant premium.

For Nvidia, the deal represents a broader strategy: expanding from the hardware powering the AI boom into the software, tools and platforms developers use to build the next generation of artificial intelligence products.

The biggest test will be whether Nvidia can preserve Hugging Face’s open ecosystem while turning the platform into a valuable part of its growing AI empire.