Nvidia’s $12.93 Billion Hugging Face Deal Expands Jensen Huang’s AI Platform Beyond Chips
Nvidia Corporation (NVDA +1.80%) announced on Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The deal gives the chip behemoth control of an influential platform within the world of AI. The company says it is used by more than 18 million developers and 200,000 companies.
Talks had been reported last week, but details were unsettled until today’s confirmation. Nvidia’s stock jumped today, up 2.5% by the afternoon. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were rising as well, up 1.1% and 1.6%, respectively.
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Hugging Face hosts more than 3 million AI models for 18 million developers
So what exactly is Hugging Face? The company’s platform is a central hub for the open source AI development world, providing devs with access to millions of AI models and important data sets. Instead of building an AI system from scratch, devs can find an existing model or application and use it as-is or modify and adapt it. It also provides tools that help developers test and deploy those models.
Access to the open source models on the platform is offered for free, unlike the proprietary models offered by frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Huang pledges Hugging Face will stay open, with no Nvidia hardware requirement
Nvidia is not presenting this as an attempt to turn Hugging Face into a storefront for its chips, and the company took pains to reassure the Hugging Face community that under its ownership, the platform will remain open source. Users will not be required to use Nvidia’s hardware or operate within its ecosystem.
In a blog post penned by Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, that fact was made clear: “Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem. Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want, and the computing platforms they want. Nvidia Compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.”
The deal extends Nvidia’s reach into AI software, not just chips
Strategically, the deal pushes Nvidia farther beyond the business of selling processors. But that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on chip sales. The company that influences one of the primary ways developers discover and work with AI models and applications can steer those developers toward software that “plays nice” with Nvidia hardware.
Nvidia doesn’t need to require its hardware for the deal to strengthen its position.
At $12.93 billion for $150 million in revenue, the bet is on influence over profit
For my money, the strategic vision is stronger than the near-term financial case. $12.93 billion is a steep price for a company making $150 million in annual revenue. Nvidia clearly isn’t buying Hugging Face for what it earns today. But Hugging Face gives Nvidia a recognized platform that helps it better influence the software decisions that eventually drive demand for hardware.
There is a risk, however, that Nvidia’s ownership could backfire. If open source developers feel that Nvidia is, in fact, using its position to steer them toward the Nvidia ecosystem, it could alienate them. And of course, the deal could face regulatory pushback on antitrust grounds.
Investors should watch whether Nvidia can turn its new distribution reach into a stronger business without weakening the ecosystem.
