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Nvidia has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) developer platform Hugging Face for around $12.9 billion, the chipmaker's founder and CEO announced Thursday.
"I'm excited to announce that NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000," Jensen Huang said in a statement.
More than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, Huang said, adding that more than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI.
"Together, we will scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide," he added.
Huang also underscored that Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem, saying Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.
Of the total deal value, about $11.9 billion will go to Hugging Face shareholders, while up to $1 billion in equity is set aside to retain Hugging Face employees joining Nvidia.
The acquisition marks Nvidia's second-largest deal on record, following its $20 billion purchase of assets from AI chip startup Groq late last year. Before that, its largest transaction was the roughly $7 billion purchase of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox in 2019.
Hugging Face, often described as a GitHub-like repository for open-source AI models, had previously turned down a $500 million offer from Nvidia in 2025. Its valuation has since grown sharply from the $4.5 billion it was assigned in 2023 after a $235 million funding round.
News of the talks first emerged a week earlier, when The Information reported that Nvidia and Hugging Face were in advanced discussions over a possible acquisition.
Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue has said his company approached Huang directly weeks before the agreement was finalized.
The deal comes as Nvidia continues to expand beyond hardware into the broader AI software stack. The company reported second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion this year, more than double the same period in 2025, driven by continued demand for AI computing infrastructure.
Hugging Face has positioned itself as a central hub for open and open-weight AI models, a category Huang has previously advocated for as a way to broaden global access to AI development tools.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.
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