Hugging Face approached Nvidia’s Huang weeks ahead of $12.9B acquisition, CEO tells CNBC

Nvidia has agreed to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, marking the chipmaker's most aggressive push beyond hardware into AI software and services. CEO Jensen Huang said the deal will "expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide."

The acquisition represents Nvidia's largest bet on moving up the AI stack, targeting the developer ecosystem that has made Hugging Face a hub for machine learning models and datasets. Huang confirmed the deal was initiated when Hugging Face approached him weeks before the announcement, according to CNBC.

The $12.9 billion price tag signals Nvidia's willingness to deploy its market dominance in AI chips toward controlling more of the AI development lifecycle. Hugging Face hosts thousands of open-source models and has become infrastructure for AI developers globally, giving Nvidia direct access to a community that already relies heavily on its GPUs.

The combination positions Nvidia to bundle hardware, software, and now a major developer platform—potentially tightening its grip on enterprise AI spending as companies build and deploy models at scale.