Nvidia to buy AI platform Hugging Face for US$12.9bil

Nvidia announced on Thursday that it will purchase AI platform Hugging Face for US$12.9 billion, aiming to diversify its presence in the AI sector. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the deal in a statement on the company's website, stating that the price was justified. The acquisition comes after a significant increase from the initial US$7 billion valuation, according to US media reports.

Hugging Face, founded in 2016 by three French entrepreneurs, describes itself as "the AI community building the future." The company emphasizes open models, which can be downloaded and modified, as opposed to closed models from rivals like OpenAI or Anthropic. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang assured that Hugging Face's core model would remain unchanged, stating that it would continue to support open source and open weight models from the ecosystem.

The AI platform boasts over 18 million users who have created more than 3 million models and over a million applications. Huang emphasized the importance of open models for Nvidia's growth, expressing excitement about scaling the open community within the company. Hugging Face co-founder Clem Delangue confirmed that the entire team would join Nvidia as part of the acquisition, aiming to maintain an independently neutral platform within Nvidia.