Nvidia closes $13B Hugging Face deal, vows to keep model hub open

Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, the AI model repository often called the GitHub of AI, for $13 billion — its largest outright acquisition, far eclipsing the $6.9 billion Mellanox deal of 2020. The $5.4 trillion chipmaker said the goal is to speed the spread of open-weight models, whose designs are public and can be downloaded, customized, and run on users' own hardware.

"Open weights enable start-ups, established businesses, universities, and public institutions to build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch or paying frontier-model prices for every task," CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. Nvidia pledged Hugging Face will remain open even as it takes control of a key distribution channel for AI adoption.

The deal follows an August report that Nvidia was pursuing Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, with Salesforce among rival bidders. Hugging Face reportedly turned down a large Nvidia investment last year at a $7 billion valuation to keep its independence. Nvidia hopes to close by 2027, though the transaction faces likely competition-regulator scrutiny. Nvidia's Justin Boitano said regulators should see it as "really a positive outcome."