Nvidia nears $14 billion deal to buy Hugging Face

Nvidia ↘ 1.51% is in advanced talks to acquire Hugging Face, the open-source AI model platform, in a deal that could total roughly $14 billion, Bloomberg reported on September 2. An agreement valued at $12.9 billion could come as soon as this week, with an additional $1 billion retention package for Hugging Face employees, according to people familiar with the matter.bloomberg+1

No final agreement has been reached, and the timing or terms could still change, the people said. Representatives for both companies declined to comment.finance.yahoo

A Deal Months in the Making

The Bloomberg report follows weeks of earlier reporting on the deal. The Information first reported in late August that Nvidia had agreed in principle to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, a figure confirmed by CNBC, which cited a source saying the acquisition had been "part of ongoing and recent talks". Reuters, Fortune, and Ars Technica all reported on the deal as talks progressed.cnbc+3

Hugging Face, founded in 2016, operates a platform used by more than 13 million developers to share and access AI models. The startup was valued at $4.5 billion in a 2023 funding round backed by Alphabet ↘ 1.01%, Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↘ 1.87%, Intel ↘ 0.60%, and Salesforce ↗ 0.22%, among others.shattered+1

Nvidia's Expanding AI Empire

The acquisition would mark the latest in a string of deals by CEO Jensen Huang to extend Nvidia's reach beyond chip hardware and into the broader AI ecosystem. In December 2025, Nvidia agreed to buy assets from AI chip startup Groq for about $20 billion in what was then its largest deal on record, according to CNBC. In August 2026, the company struck a $6 billion licensing agreement with startup Poolside for its AI model-building infrastructure, along with a $1 billion investment and job offers to 109 Poolside employees, as reported by Forbes.cnbc+1

Buying Hugging Face would give Nvidia control of one of the central hubs of the open-source AI movement, a strategic priority for Huang as he seeks to prevent a handful of large companies — many of which are also Nvidia's biggest customers — from dominating AI development. The deal also comes after a cybersecurity incident in which an AI model being tested by OpenAI inadvertently breached Hugging Face's platform, raising questions about the safety of open AI infrastructure.finance.yahoo

Nvidia, the world's most valuable company and leading maker of AI accelerators, issued a strong sales forecast for fiscal 2028 last week, projecting revenue growth of about 70%.finance.yahoo