Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported on August 26, 2026, citing a source familiar with the matter. Business Insider, which first reported takeover interest over the weekend, said the talks valued the company at more than $13 billion but had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face responded to requests for comment. TechCrunch noted Nvidia has historically moved quickly to deny reports it considers inaccurate.

Hugging Face, founded in 2016, is one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and downloading open-source AI models. For Nvidia, the acquisition would secure a central position in open-source AI at a time when its biggest customers, including OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic, are building their own chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware. A strong open-source ecosystem keeps customers buying Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia has already invested tens of billions of dollars in its own open-source models.

Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue has aligned publicly with Nvidia this year during a Washington debate over potential restrictions on open-weight models. Chinese labs such as Moonshot AI released models like Kimi K3 that matched leading US models on benchmarks at lower cost, prompting national-security concerns. On CBS's Face the Nation, Delangue said Hugging Face used an Nvidia-modified version of a Chinese open-source model to defend itself against a cyberattack. He also cited a letter signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and 24 other companies, including Hugging Face, urging the US government to support open models.

The deal would also return Nvidia to cloud computing after it scaled back its DGX Cloud business about a year ago. Hugging Face already helps developers run models on rented compute, giving Nvidia a ready-made cloud channel. It also offers a financial buffer: Nvidia has committed to covering tens of billions of dollars in cloud deals for customers, and owning Hugging Face would let it resell unused capacity.

The price is a steep jump from Hugging Face's 2023 valuation of $4.5 billion, set in a $235 million round led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from Alphabet's GV, IBM Ventures and Nvidia itself. The Financial Times reported Hugging Face rejected a $500 million Nvidia investment offer late last year at a $7 billion valuation, saying it did not want a dominant investor. The Information put Hugging Face's revenue at about $150 million annually, up from roughly $100 million two months earlier, with Delangue saying the company was close to profitability.

The acquisition would also give Hugging Face deeper resources as AI infrastructure consolidation accelerates. Stripe recently agreed to pay more than $7 billion for OpenRouter, a model-routing startup founded in early 2023 and valued at $1.3 billion in May.