Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face, the popular AI platform for sharing and building open-source models, in what could be one of the chip giant’s biggest deals to date.
The two sides have been in takeover talks in recent weeks about a deal that would do just that value Hugging Face at over $13 billionsaid a person familiar with the matter. The companies have not yet reached a deal and the talks could still fall through, the person said. Business Insider was the first to report on Sunday that Hugging Face had an acquisition interest.
Nvidia and Hugging Face did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia has continued to ramp up its dealmaking with his huge pile of money. The company said Wednesday that it has committed $18 billion to equity investments for the remainder of the fiscal year, adding to the $47.9 billion it already has in private companies.
Microsoft also met with Hugging Face, but the acquaintance and a second person said the talks are not ongoing.
Nvidia already has a relationship with Hugging Face. The chipmaker participated in the $235 million funding round in 2023, which valued it at $4.5 billion.
Hugging Face turned down a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia late last year, which would have valued it at $7 billion, the Financial Times previously reported. reported. Hugging Face said at the time that it did not want a dominant investor who could influence decisions.
Hugging Face sits at the center of the open-source AI ecosystem, hosting millions of AI models and datasets for developers to build on. Owning the platform could give Nvidia more of a foothold with these developers – and potentially put more workload on the chips.
Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf.
But Nvidia’s ownership could also complicate one of Hugging Face’s strengths: its neutrality. The platform supports models and hardware from across the industry, including Nvidia competitors such as AMD and Intel.
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