Nvidia to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion

The deal, which was reported last week, will allow Hugging Face to continue operating as an open platform for the wider AI ecosystem, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a blog post.

The acquisition will be Nvidia’s second-largest deal, after its $20 billion purchase of assets from chipmaker Groq in December. Before that, Nvidia’s biggest acquisition was Israeli chipmaker Mellanox for nearly $7 billion in 2019.

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Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company, driven by strong demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) that power generative AI. The Hugging Face deal highlights Nvidias growing focus on AI platforms and shows that the company is expanding beyond chips.

Hugging Face was recently involved in a hacking incident that raised concerns about the growing risks around powerful AI and cybersecurity tools.

Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue, a strong supporter of open-source AI models, blamed engineering mistakes for the attack. He said the company used an Nvidia version of a Chinese open-source model to help resolve the issue.

“Open models let start-ups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch. They enable organizations to match the right model to the right job,” Mr. Huang wrote in Thursday’s blog post. “That is how A.I. can advance safely; strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty; accelerate innovation; and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and Main Street businesses around the world.”

“Together, we will make A.I. more open, more capable and more accessible to people and institutions around the world,” wrote Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, in a blog post.

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