Nvidia has confirmed its acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, concluding weeks of rumours. Hugging Face's platform is reported to host three million models, one million applications, and half a million datasets, serving over 18 million developers.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated in a blog post that Hugging Face will continue to support open-source and open-weight models, aiming to expand developer access. Huang emphasised that Nvidia compute will not be a requirement to build or deploy through Hugging Face, ensuring it remains an open platform for the AI ecosystem.
Hugging Face, founded in 2016, has raised over $395 million in funding to date. Its CEO, Clem Delangue, indicated that the acquisition would provide the necessary compute, support, collaboration, and visibility for the company to scale its open-source alternative to closed-source APIs.