SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA / RankWire.AI / – Nvidia has announced a definitive agreement to purchase Hugging Face for $12.93 billion on Thursday. The deal was finalized on September 2, 2026. Nvidia plans to pay roughly $11.9 billion to Hugging Face’s shareholders, with some adjustments possible. Additionally, the transaction includes up to about $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for employees joining Nvidia. The closing is expected in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals.
Hugging Face manages a popular platform for creating, sharing, and deploying AI models, datasets, and applications. Nvidia reports over 18 million developers, researchers, and creators use the platform. It hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies rely on its services to explore, evaluate, customize, and deploy AI solutions. The platform has become a central hub for open-source and open-weight AI development.
Nvidia emphasized that Hugging Face will continue to support developers working with various models, frameworks, cloud providers, and computing platforms. Hardware from Nvidia will not be mandatory for building or deploying on Hugging Face. The platform will keep supporting open-source and open-weight models from different developers. Nvidia also confirmed that Hugging Face will maintain support for multiple cloud services and accelerator platforms. This includes ongoing access for developers using hardware from other semiconductor companies.
Deal safeguards Hugging Face’s open platform approach
Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf. The company developed software libraries alongside its hosting services for models and datasets. During its last funding round in August 2023, Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion. That round raised $235 million from tech investors. Nvidia and Hugging Face had already collaborated before the deal, including projects giving developers access to Nvidia infrastructure via Hugging Face tools.
Nvidia filed details of the agreement in a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3. The filing states the acquisition has not yet been finalized. It requires standard closing conditions and regulatory approval. Nvidia also reaffirmed its commitment to keeping the platform open under current practices. This includes allowing uploads and downloads of selected models and datasets. It also guarantees ongoing support for silicon vendors other than Nvidia.
Approval from regulators is still needed for closure
Nvidia already has a strong presence on the Hugging Face platform through its open AI releases. The company reports more than 500 models and over 250 open datasets published there. Nvidia also creates libraries and tools for developers to use, modify, and expand. Hugging Face offers infrastructure for researchers, companies, and individual developers working with AI. Its services include model hosting, datasets, software tools, and cloud-based resources for building and deploying AI applications.
The $12.93 billion Nvidia-Hugging Face deal remains pending until all closing conditions are met. Nvidia confirmed that Hugging Face will continue supporting models from across the AI ecosystem after the acquisition. Developers will keep their options involving models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers, and platforms. The platform will also maintain multi-cloud and multi-accelerator support. Nvidia expects the deal to close during the first half of 2027 once regulatory approvals are secured.