Nvidia compra Hugging Face por 11.900 millones de dólares

Nvidia reached a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, one of the world's leading platforms for developing, sharing, and deploying open-source artificial intelligence models and applications, for $12.93 billion. This marks Nvidia's largest acquisition to date, surpassing its $6.9 billion purchase of networking technology company Mellanox in 2020.

The move bolsters Nvidia's ambitions to expand beyond semiconductors in the rapidly growing AI industry. The transaction will pay Nvidia $11.9 billion to investors in Hugging Face, and includes a retention program worth up to $1 billion in stock for employees joining Nvidia. Closing is expected in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals.

Nvidia assures it will preserve Hugging Face's current philosophy and open platform, allowing developers, businesses, and researchers to continue uploading and downloading models and datasets. The company also commits to Hugging Face continuing to support rival chip providers. While the open weights enable startups, established firms, universities and public institutions to harness advanced capabilities without training models from scratch or paying premium prices for leading models, Nvidia warns that growing regulatory pressure on open models could affect Hugging Face's business and limit expected benefits of the acquisition.

The company notes that initiatives to restrict or hinder development and distribution of open-source code could force changes to the platform, increase regulatory compliance costs or limit certain services. The SEC filing highlights that many of the most popular open models originate in China and are later used and adapted by developers worldwide, so any restrictions on access to this technology could negatively impact the acquired platform.

Founded in 2016 by Frenchmen Clement Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face has become the world's leading platform for sharing AI models and data. The startup was valued at $4.5 billion in August 2023 in a financing round raising $235 million, with Nvidia participating.