NVIDIA Reportedly Set to Acquire AI Platform Hugging Face for 12.9 Billion Dollars

NVIDIA is reportedly in the process of acquiring Hugging Face, a prominent platform for hosting AI models and datasets, for 12.9 billion dollars. The information, first reported by The Information, suggests that the GPU giant is moving to take control of a central hub in the AI sector. Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by three French nationals and is currently based in New York with an office in Paris. The platform serves approximately 18 million users and hosts about 3 million models and over 1 million datasets. While neither company has officially confirmed the deal, sources indicate that Hugging Face had previously engaged an investment bank to prepare for a large scale operation. The acquisition would represent one of NVIDIA's largest to date, especially considering Hugging Face's reported revenue of approximately 150 million dollars. This move follows a period of record growth for NVIDIA, which recently reported second quarter fiscal 2027 revenues of 96.22 billion dollars, exceeding analyst expectations. CEO Jensen Huang has described the current state of AI as a turning point, noting that frontier model developers are poised to become some of the most important tech companies in history. The strategic goal of the acquisition varies by report. One source suggests NVIDIA aims to re enter the cloud universe by leveraging Hugging Face's popularity to sell hosted computing resources. Another source suggests the move allows NVIDIA to control an open source model platform at a time when closed source competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic are attempting to develop their own chips to replace NVIDIA GPUs.