Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to The Information, which cited a source familiar with the matter.
Source: TechCrunch · August 27, 2026 at 10:02 AM · AI-assisted report
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KUALA LUMPUR, 27 AUGUST 2026 —
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to The Information, which cited a source familiar with the matter.
Market Impact
The proposed deal would value the New York-based AI platform at more than $13 billion, though The Information said talks had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still collapse. Business Insider first reported on Sunday that Hugging Face was considering takeover offers. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face responded to requests for comment from TechCrunch.
Hugging Face operates one of the largest open repositories for AI models, hosting more than 1.5 million models and 250,000 datasets. The acquisition would give Nvidia a critical hub for developers building open-source AI systems.
For Nvidia, the deal would shore up its dominance in AI chips by strengthening the open-source ecosystem. Rivals such as OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic are developing proprietary chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s hardware. A vibrant open-source AI community provides customers with alternatives to closed systems and keeps demand for Nvidia’s GPUs high.
Hugging Face has already aligned publicly with Nvidia’s open-source strategy. In an interview with CNBC last month, chief executive Clem Delangue warned that China is “clearly dominating” open-source AI and reiterated his support for unrestricted model sharing.
Earlier this month, Delangue told CBS that Hugging Face used an Nvidia-modified version of a Chinese open-source model after a cyberattack and signed a letter with Jensen Huang and 24 other companies urging Washington to support open models rather than impose restrictions.
The proposed purchase would also give Nvidia a route back into cloud computing. About a year ago the chipmaker scaled back its own DGX Cloud service, but Hugging Face already helps developers run AI models using rented computing power. Nvidia has also promised to cover tens of billions of dollars in cloud commitments for its customers; owning Hugging Face would let it resell any unused capacity to the platform’s users.
The $12.9 billion price tag represents a near-tripling of Hugging Face’s last valuation. In May 2023 the company raised $235 million at a $4.5 billion valuation led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Alphabet’s GV, IBM Ventures and Nvidia itself.
The chipmaker had also made a $500 million investment offer late last year that would have valued Hugging Face at $7 billion, but the startup rejected the proposal to avoid a dominant investor influencing its decisions.
Hugging Face’s revenue has grown from about $100 million two months ago to roughly $150 million annually, according to The Information. Delangue told TechCrunch last month the company is “close to profitability.” Even so, a $13 billion valuation would imply a steep multiple for a business of that size.
The agreement would also give Hugging Face access to Nvidia’s deeper financial resources at a time when other AI infrastructure players are being acquired. Stripe recently agreed to buy OpenRouter, a 2023-founded startup that helps customers select and route AI models, for more than $7 billion—a valuation nearly six times its $1.3 billion Series B figure just four months earlier.
For Malaysian tech investors and AI startups, the deal signals accelerating consolidation in open-source AI infrastructure, which could lower costs and expand access to customisable models across Southeast Asia.
Related: Nvidia Corp