Nvidia has officially agreed to acquire AI platform Hugging Face for a staggering $129.3 billion. This acquisition, confirmed on September 3, 2026, is one of the largest in the chipmaker's history and signals its aggressive expansion into the AI software ecosystem.
Hugging Face, valued at $4.5 billion in a 2023 funding round, has become the central hub for open-source AI models. Nvidia's move to acquire the platform is a strategic play to control the "main public square where open models are posted and downloaded". This is particularly significant as many developers of closed AI models are trying to reduce their dependence on Nvidia chips, while most open models still run on them. Notably, Nvidia recently stated it has $18 billion set aside for equity investments through the rest of its 2027 fiscal year.
Nvidia has committed to maintaining Hugging Face as an open platform, allowing developers to freely choose models, frameworks, and cloud services without being required to use Nvidia's compute resources. CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that open models provide organizations with the ability to "build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch". As noted previously, the deal, while unconfirmed at the time, would represent a significant shift in the AI landscape, giving Nvidia control over a key distribution channel for AI technology.