According to reports from Bloomberg, Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face in a transaction that may total about $14 billion. An agreement by Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion may be reached as soon as this week, said one person familiar with the matter. The deal may include a $1 billion retention package for Hugging Face employees, though a final agreement hasn't been reached and the timing or details could still change.
As reported by NDTV, buying Hugging Face would be the biggest move yet in CEO Jensen Huang's push to broaden the uptake of artificial intelligence and extend his customer list. The deal would give Nvidia control of one of the key platforms where developers showcase and share AI models. Huang is committed to helping foster so-called open source models to avoid the technology of a few large companies coming to dominate AI, as these companies currently provide him with the biggest chunk of his revenue but are also forging ahead with their own chip projects.
According to NDTV, Hugging Face, which makes AI software and hosts it for other companies, was founded in 2016 and was valued at $4.5 billion in a funding round three years ago. The startup operates a platform for sharing AI models that can be used freely by others. Nvidia is already a backer of Hugging Face, alongside Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Intel Corp. and Salesforce Inc., among others.
As reported by NDTV, Nvidia has struck several deals in the past year, including a $6 billion licensing agreement in August with startup Poolside that included extending job offers to many of that company's employees. Nvidia also paid about $20 billion for most of the chip startup Groq. Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, is the leading maker of AI accelerators and has gradually added a variety of other technologies with the goal of expanding the AI economy.
According to NDTV, Nvidia gave a surprisingly strong sales forecast for fiscal 2028 last week, saying revenue would grow about 70%. The Santa Clara, California-based company is the leading maker of AI accelerators and has been expanding its technology portfolio to capture more of the AI economy. Representatives for Nvidia and Hugging Face declined to comment on the acquisition talks.
