Nvidia has been in acquisition conversations with Hugging Face, the popular platform for sharing and building open-source AI models, according to reporting by Business Insider. The discussions center on a valuation of more than $13 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has confirmed the talks or responded to requests for comment. The person familiar with the negotiations cautioned that the companies have not yet reached a deal and the talks could still fall apart.
This would represent a significant step up in valuation for Hugging Face. Nvidia participated in a $235 million funding round for the company in 2023 that valued it at $4.5 billion. The Financial Times previously reported that Hugging Face turned down a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia late last year that would have valued the company at $7 billion, citing concerns about having a dominant investor that could sway decisions.
Microsoft also met with Hugging Face about a potential acquisition, but according to sources familiar with the matter, those talks are not ongoing.
Nvidia has been actively pursuing acquisitions, with the company committing $18 billion to equity investments for the remainder of its fiscal year on top of $47.9 billion already held in private companies, as announced Wednesday.
Hugging Face, founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf, hosts millions of AI models and datasets that developers can access and build upon. Acquiring the platform could give Nvidia greater access to developers in the open-source AI ecosystem and potentially drive more workloads to Nvidia’s chips.
However, Nvidia ownership could complicate one of Hugging Face’s key strengths: its neutrality. The platform currently supports models and hardware from across the industry, including from Nvidia competitors such as AMD and Intel. An acquisition by Nvidia could affect that vendor-agnostic positioning.
Key facts
- Nvidia is in talks to acquire Hugging Face for a valuation exceeding $13 billion, though no deal has been finalized
- Hugging Face turned down a $500 million Nvidia investment offer last year that valued it at $7 billion
- Nvidia invested in Hugging Face’s $235 million funding round in 2023, valuing the company at $4.5 billion
- Hugging Face hosts millions of AI models and datasets used by developers across the open-source AI ecosystem
- Acquiring Hugging Face could give Nvidia greater influence with open-source developers but could complicate the platform’s vendor-neutral positioning