Nvidia reportedly closes in on a ~$12.9B Hugging Face acquisition

Nvidia is reportedly in advanced talks to buy Hugging Face for about $12.9 billion, roughly three times the company’s 2023 valuation. The deal is not signed, so it may not happen. But the reported logic is clear. Nvidia already dominates much of the computing infrastructure used to train and run AI models. Hugging Face is where many open-weight models, tools and datasets are discovered, shared and deployed.

Hugging Face reportedly earns around $150 million a year and is close to profitability. Nvidia had previously offered $500 million for a stake, at a $7 billion valuation, and was turned down. A full acquisition at this price would give Nvidia a much closer relationship with the ecosystem built around open models, not just the chips those models run on.

For business owners, this matters because the AI stack may become more concentrated. If Nvidia owns both the underlying compute layer and a major distribution point for open models, it could influence how easily your team finds, tests and puts models into production. That does not mean your AI tools suddenly change. It does mean vendor choices, pricing, hosting options and access to models could become more tied to Nvidia’s platform over time.

This is the kind of thing we build into an AI command centre, keeping watch on platform shifts that may affect the tools and suppliers your business depends on.