NVIDIA plans to acquire Hugging Face for approximately $12.93 billion, with the aim of strengthening the ecosystem for open AI models. The acquisition would rank among the largest transactions in the company’s history.
NVIDIA announced that it will acquire Hugging Face, a developer-focused platform, for $12.93 billion. The deal will further strengthen the company’s position in the ecosystem for open models. NVIDIA’s share price was reported to have declined modestly following the acquisition announcement.
Through the acquisition, NVIDIA will expand its access to a platform for the collaborative development and sharing of models, datasets and software tools, increasing its influence in the open-model space. The move also comes against the backdrop of efforts to develop in-house models such as Nemotron.
The transaction involves approximately $11.9 billion in cash, along with up to $1 billion in employee equity awards in NVIDIA. Hugging Face plans to continue promoting open technologies and will not require the use of NVIDIA chips for model deployment on its platform.
Hugging Face is known for its platform, which also provides datasets, software libraries and cloud services. Since its founding in 2016, the company’s investors have included Intel and Amazon. Following completion of the acquisition, NVIDIA is expected to gain greater influence across the AI ecosystem as a whole.