NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face in a transaction valued at approximately $12,930,300,000, the company announced on Thursday. The deal is also recorded in an 8‑K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Deal structure
- The transaction is composed of roughly $11.9 billion in cash consideration payable to Hugging Face shareholders.
- In addition, up to $1 billion of equity‑based retention awards are planned for Hugging Face employees who will join NVIDIA.
Timing and approvals
The closing of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals. According to NVIDIA and the SEC filing, the parties expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2027.
Strategic rationale
The acquisition gives NVIDIA a direct position in one of the leading platforms for open‑source and open‑weight AI models. For NVIDIA — already a dominant player in AI hardware — the move brings it closer to the software layer for model development, distribution and enterprise deployment.
Scale and role of Hugging Face
NVIDIA stated that more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use the Hugging Face platform. On the service there are more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications available. Over 200,000 companies rely on the platform for model discovery, evaluation, customization and deployment.
Neutrality and multi‑vendor support
NVIDIA emphasized that Hugging Face will remain an open platform after the transaction: developers will continue to be free to choose models, frameworks, cloud and inference providers, and compute platforms. NVIDIA also said its compute capacity will not be a requirement for developing or deploying models on Hugging Face. The SEC filing further notes NVIDIA’s commitment that Hugging Face will continue to support other chip vendors.
Risks and regulatory considerations
NVIDIA flagged potential government restrictions on the development, distribution, access to or use of open‑source AI models as risks that could affect the Hugging Face platform and NVIDIA’s business.
Valuation context
According to TechCrunch, Hugging Face raised $235 million in 2023 in a funding round led by Salesforce Ventures that valued the company at $4.5 billion. The roughly $12.93 billion price announced now represents nearly a threefold valuation increase compared with that earlier round.
Executive remarks
Media reports cite Clément Delangue, Chief Executive Officer of Hugging Face, saying the company sought more scale, compute capacity, support, partnership and visibility — factors that led them to approach Jensen Huang.
Next steps
The parties will seek the necessary regulatory approvals and satisfy customary closing conditions. If approved on schedule, the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027. Market participants and regulators will continue to monitor the impact on platform openness, competitive dynamics and any regulatory responses.
