SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA / RankWire.AI / – Nvidia has revealed plans to acquire Hugging Face in a definitive deal valued at $12.93 billion, announced Thursday. The agreement was signed on September 2, 2026, with Nvidia set to pay approximately $11.9 billion to Hugging Face shareholders, subject to certain adjustments. The deal also includes up to about $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for employees who join Nvidia. The transaction is anticipated to finalize in the first half of 2027, pending necessary regulatory approvals.
Hugging Face offers a popular platform for creating, sharing, and deploying AI models, datasets, and applications. Nvidia reported that over 18 million developers, researchers, and creators utilize the platform. It hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications. Additionally, more than 200,000 companies leverage its services to discover, evaluate, customize, and deploy AI systems. The platform has established itself as a central hub for open-source and open-weight AI development.
Nvidia stated that Hugging Face will continue to support developers working with various models, frameworks, cloud providers, and computing platforms. Hardware from Nvidia will not be mandated for building or deploying models via Hugging Face. The platform will keep supporting open-source and open-weight models from different developers, and Nvidia confirmed that Hugging Face will maintain compatibility with multiple cloud services and accelerator platforms. This includes ongoing support for hardware supplied by other semiconductor companies.
Deal safeguards Hugging Face’s open platform approach
Founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face developed software libraries alongside its model and dataset hosting services. During its last disclosed funding round in August 2023, the company was valued at $4.5 billion, raising $235 million from tech investors. Prior to the acquisition, Nvidia and Hugging Face collaborated on projects that allowed developers to access Nvidia’s computing infrastructure through familiar Hugging Face tools.
Nvidia disclosed the definitive agreement in a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3. The filing confirms that the acquisition has not yet closed, with completion contingent on standard closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Nvidia also reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining Hugging Face as an open platform under its existing practices, including support for uploading and downloading selected models and datasets, as well as continued backing for hardware from non-Nvidia silicon vendors.
Regulatory clearance still required before finalization
Nvidia has already established a significant presence on the Hugging Face platform through its open AI releases, publishing more than 500 models and over 250 open datasets there. The company also provides libraries and tools that developers can modify and extend. Hugging Face serves as an infrastructure hub for researchers, firms, and independent developers working with AI, offering model hosting, datasets, software utilities, and cloud resources for building and deploying AI applications.
The $12.93 billion Nvidia-Hugging Face deal remains pending until all closing conditions are fulfilled. Nvidia affirmed that Hugging Face will continue supporting a wide array of models from across the AI ecosystem even after the deal’s completion. Developers will retain their options regarding models, frameworks, cloud providers, inference engines, and computing platforms as part of the commitments made. Hugging Face will also continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment, with Nvidia expecting the transaction to close during the first half of 2027 once regulatory approvals are obtained.