Nvidia may acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion in a major AI deal

The Information and Reuters report that Nvidia has agreed to purchase Hugging Face for 129 billion dollars, although neither side has made an official statement. Business Insider adds that the valuation tops 130 billion dollars and the transaction is close to finalization, yet it could still fall through. This would become Jensen Huang’s largest acquisition, eclipsing the 70 billion‑dollar Mellanox buy‑out from 2020.

Financially, the target generates roughly 1.5 billion dollars in annual revenue, so the proposed price equates to about 86 times that figure and roughly three times the 2023 valuation of 4.5 billion dollars. Hugging Face previously turned down a 500 million‑dollar Nvidia investment at a 7 billion‑dollar valuation to avoid being dominated by a single large investor.

Effectively, Nvidia is securing the default download gateway. Hugging Face operates as the AI version of GitHub, hosting models, datasets, and evaluations. Controlling the page where developers encounter installation instructions shapes which accelerators are marketed. While OpenAI and Google are building their own silicon, a large portion of the open‑weights ecosystem remains anchored on this platform.

The community will watch whether default runtimes highlight only CUDA, whether documentation for competing chips is deprioritized, and whether inference buttons steer traffic toward Nvidia’s cloud services. The 129 billion‑dollar price tag reflects the value of distribution rights and hardware pathways more than the 1.5 billion‑dollar revenue stream. Post‑acquisition defaults will determine if neutrality endures, as the hardware moat expands by dictating the first installation guidance developers see.

Additional facts: The 2023 funding round featured Salesforce, Google, Amazon, IBM, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm, with Nvidia having also contributed earlier. The deal’s magnitude signals a focus on controlling README‑driven pip commands and CUDA examples rather than on traditional profit metrics. Should negotiations collapse, the existing page remains unchanged; if they succeed, README sections, one‑click deployment options, and hardware badges will reveal the new orientation faster than any press release.

From a strategic perspective, acquiring this gateway builds a quieter chip moat compared to launching another flagship graphics card, making it harder for benchmarks to directly compromise the position.