Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, one of the world’s largest platforms for distributing and developing open AI models, in a deal valued at EUR 11 billion. The chipmaker announced the agreement on Thursday, signaling a strategic push beyond hardware and deeper into the software and distribution layer of artificial intelligence.
The acquisition marks a significant step in Nvidia’s broader AI strategy. The company built its AI business first through accelerators, then AI servers, and later rack-scale and data center-scale platforms. Buying a major model distribution hub extends that reach into the tools developers rely on every day. Under the terms outlined by Nvidia, Hugging Face will retain its brand and remain open to models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers, and computing platforms.
What Nvidia Gains From the Acquisition
Hugging Face currently serves more than 18 million developers, researchers, and creators. According to Nvidia, users have uploaded over 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications to the platform. More than 200,000 companies use the service to find, assess, modify, and deploy AI models.
Nvidia says this model will remain intact after the deal closes. The platform will continue to host open-source and open-weight models from a range of developers while supporting multiple clouds and accelerator architectures. Nvidia has stated it will not force platform participants into its own hardware ecosystem, even as it holds the largest share of the AI hardware market and stands to benefit from rising demand.
Existing Ties and Platform Improvements
Nvidia already has a substantial presence on Hugging Face. The company says it has published more than 500 models and 250 open datasets, making it one of the platform’s largest contributors. Nvidia also develops some of its models, software libraries, and tools openly so third-party developers can modify and build on them.
The company positions the deal as an expansion of its commitment to open-weight AI models and a way to broaden adoption of artificial intelligence across different types of developers. Nvidia says its infrastructure, engineering resources, and global presence can improve Hugging Face’s platform reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference, and deployment capabilities.
How the Deal Came Together
The agreement appears to have originated with Hugging Face’s founder. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Clément Delangue approached him while evaluating the company’s next stage and concluded that Nvidia could provide a suitable home for Hugging Face, its community, and its open-model ambitions. Nvidia agreed to acquire the platform and continue developing it. The Hugging Face team will join the Nvidia organization and keep working on the project.
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