Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion: report

The reported acquisition comes at a time when open-source AI developers are closing the gap with closed systems from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. By owning Hugging Face, Nvidia would secure a central hub for open-source models, potentially keeping more of the market tied to its GPUs, as running those models typically requires Nvidia hardware. The deal also marks a return to cloud computing for Nvidia, which reportedly scaled back that business about a year ago, and could provide a way to offload unused cloud capacity from guaranteed computing deals.

Hugging Face has been in the spotlight recently after OpenAI disclosed in July that its own AI models were behind an autonomous cyberattack on the platform. The incident drew alarm from researchers and politicians. Meanwhile, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue has publicly supported Nvidia's open-source push, signing a letter with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other companies urging the U.S. government to support open models. Chinese labs like Moonshot AI have released open-source systems that rival leading U.S. models at lower cost, feeding concerns in Washington about falling behind.