Nvidia Buys Hugging Face, the Web's Biggest AI Model Hub, for $12.93 Billion
Nvidia confirmed on September 3, 2026 that it has acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion TechCrunch. The deal follows reports from August 27, when Reuters and Bloomberg both said an agreement valued at roughly $13 billion was near Reuters, Bloomberg. Bloomberg's Ian King and Rachel Metz later put the potential figure at about $14 billion Bloomberg/YouTube. The confirmed price landed between those markers.
Hugging Face is essentially the internet's central library for AI. When researchers and companies create machine learning models (the software that powers things like chatbots and image generators), they upload them to Hugging Face so others can download, study, and build on them. The platform hosts three million models, one million applications, half a million datasets, and counts over 18 million developers among its users TechCrunch. Founded in 2016, the company had raised just over $395 million in total funding. Its last round, in 2023, brought in $235 million led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Google, Amazon, IBM, and Nvidia itself TechCrunch.
The Financial Times reported that Hugging Face rejected a $500 million acquisition offer from Nvidia last year TechCrunch. The gap between that figure and the $12.93 billion final price reflects both how fast Hugging Face's business grew and how much demand for AI infrastructure increased in the meantime.
The Information reported that Hugging Face is generating approximately $150 million in annualized revenue TechCrunch. In a July 2026 interview, CEO Clem Delangue said the platform's growth rate was bringing it close to profitability TechCrunch. Nvidia had already established a presence on the platform: the company has released more than 500 models and 250 open datasets through Hugging Face TechCrunch.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that Hugging Face will remain an open platform serving the entire AI ecosystem, and that developers will not need Nvidia hardware to use it TechCrunch. Delangue said Hugging Face approached Huang seeking more computing power, support, collaboration, and visibility TechCrunch, Delangue/X. The messaging from both sides stresses continuity and platform neutrality.
The open question is whether that neutrality holds. Hugging Face's value to the AI community comes from being a neutral hub where developers can work with hardware and software from any company, not just Nvidia. Nvidia's assurance of openness addresses this directly, but whether it holds in practice will depend on governance, platform policies, and how the company structures the platform going forward.
Hugging Face has been expanding beyond software. In April 2025 the company acquired Pollen Robotics, a maker of open-source robots, and signaled plans to sell open-source robotic hardware through the platform Hugging Face Blog. That deal was Hugging Face's fifth acquisition, following additions including Gradio and XetHub Hugging Face Blog. More recently, the official Hugging Face blog featured a post titled "Inside three.ws: The Open-Source Stack That Gives AI Agents a Body, a Brain, a Wallet, and a Job," published August 29, 2026 Hugging Face Blog. The trajectory points toward ambitions in physical robots, autonomous AI agents that act on their own, and financial systems for those agents.
Nvidia already makes the computer chips that power most large-scale AI work in the world. With this acquisition, it also controls the main place where AI models are hosted and downloaded. The revenue multiple is steep relative to Hugging Face's $150 million annualized revenue, but the strategic asset is not the revenue line. It is the developer relationship. Eighteen million developers pass through Hugging Face's platform. Nvidia has now purchased that relationship outright.
In my view, the $12.93 billion price, the rejected $500 million offer from a year prior, and the revenue figure together sketch a company whose leverage increased sharply as AI investment accelerated. Hugging Face held out, and the hold-out paid off. Whether the platform's openness survives the transition from independent company to Nvidia subsidiary will shape how the open-source AI community organizes itself going forward. Alternatives exist, but none carry Hugging Face's gravity.
