SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA / RankWire.AI / – Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion in a definitive transaction announced Thursday. The companies signed the agreement on September 2, 2026. Nvidia will pay about $11.9 billion to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to certain adjustments. The deal also includes up to about $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for employees joining Nvidia. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to required regulatory approvals.
Hugging Face operates a widely used platform for developing, sharing and deploying artificial intelligence models, datasets and applications. Nvidia said more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use the platform. Hugging Face hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies also use its services to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI systems. The platform has become a major hub for open-source and open-weight AI development.
Nvidia said Hugging Face will remain open to developers using different models, frameworks, cloud providers and computing platforms. Nvidia hardware will not become a requirement for building or deploying through Hugging Face. The platform will also continue supporting open-source and open-weight models from different developers. Nvidia said Hugging Face will maintain support for multiple cloud services and accelerator platforms. That commitment includes continued access for developers using hardware supplied by other semiconductor companies.
Deal preserves Hugging Face’s open platform
French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf founded Hugging Face in 2016. The company developed software libraries alongside its model and dataset hosting services. Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion during its last disclosed funding round in August 2023. That round raised $235 million from technology investors. Nvidia and Hugging Face also worked together before the acquisition agreement, including projects that provided developers with access to Nvidia computing infrastructure through familiar Hugging Face tools.
Nvidia disclosed the definitive agreement in a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3. The filing confirms that the acquisition has not yet closed. Completion requires customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals. Nvidia also formally committed to keeping the Hugging Face platform open under its existing practices. Those commitments cover the ability to upload and download selected models and datasets. They also include continued support for silicon vendors other than Nvidia.
Regulatory approvals remain before closing
Nvidia has already maintained a large presence on the Hugging Face platform through its open AI releases. The company says it has published more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets there. Nvidia also develops libraries and tools that developers can use, modify and build upon. Hugging Face provides infrastructure for researchers, companies and independent developers working with artificial intelligence. Its services span model hosting, datasets, software tools and cloud-based resources for building and deploying AI applications.
The $12.93 billion Nvidia Hugging Face acquisition remains a pending transaction until the closing conditions are satisfied. Nvidia said Hugging Face will continue supporting models from across the AI ecosystem after completion. Developers will retain choices involving models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms under the announced commitments. Hugging Face will also continue supporting multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment. Nvidia expects the transaction to close during the first half of 2027 after receiving the necessary regulatory approvals.