Nvidia Agrees to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion

Nvidia is reportedly moving to acquire the AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, a deal that would grant the chipmaker control over one of the industry's largest repositories of AI models and datasets. This acquisition represents one of Nvidia’s most significant strategic moves to date as the company continues to solidify its presence across the entire AI ecosystem.

Given that Hugging Face generates annualized revenue of approximately $150 million, the reported purchase price reflects a substantial premium. Hugging Face previously rejected a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia last year, which would have valued the startup at $7 billion.

The current price tag also reflects a sharp increase from the $4.5 billion valuation Hugging Face received in a $235 million funding round in 2023, backed by investors including Google, Salesforce, and Nvidia itself. By controlling a platform that hosts critical open-source large language models, Nvidia gains a strategic advantage at a time when closed-model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic are actively pursuing the development of their own proprietary chips.

The news of this acquisition coincided with Nvidia’s fiscal Q2 2027 results, where the company reported a revenue increase of 106% year-on-year to $96.2 billion. This growth was driven by the unrelenting demand for AI compute, despite persistent supply constraints. Net income saw a surge of 126% to $59.7 billion, while data center revenue more than doubled to reach $89 billion.

Looking ahead, Nvidia has forecast revenue of $108 billion for the next quarter, with a projected revenue jump of approximately 70% for the next fiscal year. CEO Jensen Huang noted that while demand remains significantly higher than 70%, current supply levels allow them to confidently guide toward that figure. However, CFO Colette Kress did warn that the company remains supply-constrained even as demand continues to accelerate.