Nvidia has reached an agreement to acquire Hugging Face, a leading open-source artificial intelligence platform, for $12.93 billion. The transaction marks a significant step for the chipmaker as it broadens its presence beyond hardware into AI software, models and developer tools.

Chief Executive Jensen Huang announced the deal, stating that Nvidia and Hugging Face will work together to scale the platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions around the world. Hugging Face currently serves more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators. It hosts over 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, while more than 200,000 companies use the service to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI systems.

Platform to Remain Open and Independent of Nvidia Hardware

Huang stressed that Hugging Face will continue operating as an open platform for the broader AI ecosystem. Developers will retain the freedom to select the models, frameworks, cloud providers, inference services and computing platforms of their choice. Nvidia hardware will not be required to build on or deploy through the platform.

The company also confirmed that Hugging Face will keep supporting open-source and open-weight models as well as multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment. Nvidia already publishes more than 500 models and 250 open datasets on the platform, and the two firms have previously collaborated on AI infrastructure and development tools.

Huang said Nvidia’s infrastructure, engineering resources and global reach would help improve the platform’s reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment capabilities while preserving the open ecosystem that established Hugging Face’s role in the industry.

Deal Structure and Timeline

Under the terms, Nvidia will pay approximately $11.9 billion to Hugging Face investors. An additional equity-based retention program of up to $1 billion will be available for employees who join Nvidia. The full Hugging Face team is expected to remain in place.

Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue described the agreement as an inflection point for open-source AI, coming ten years after the company’s founding. The transaction still requires regulatory approvals and is expected to close in 2027.

Huang has previously co-authored an open letter with other industry leaders supporting the importance of open-weight models to the AI economy and arguing against restrictions that could hinder U.S. leadership in the field.

Insider Share Sale Notice

Separately, Nvidia director Mark Stevens filed a Form 144 notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicating a proposed sale of up to 5 million Nvidia shares, valued at roughly $1.09 billion. The filing lists Merrill Lynch as broker and September 2 as the approximate sale date. It represents a notice of proposed transactions rather than confirmation that the full amount has been sold.

Stevens-linked entities have already completed several sales since June totaling about $707 million. Despite the activity, Nvidia shares closed at $224.41 on the day before the acquisition announcement, rising 3.2 percent amid continued investor focus on the company’s AI-driven growth.

The acquisition expands Nvidia’s reach into the software layer that supports the rapid development and deployment of AI models, complementing its established position in graphics processing units and related infrastructure.