Following outstanding, market-beating quarterly financial results, reports indicate that Nvidia is pursuing a massive expansion of its artificial intelligence portfolio. The dominant chipmaker is in advanced discussions to purchase open-source platform Hugging Face. If finalized, the transaction could be valued at upwards of $13 billion.
A transaction at this price point would value Hugging Face at approximately triple the $4.5 billion valuation established during its $235 million capital raise in 2023, which drew investment from Salesforce, Google, and Nvidia itself.
Negotiations have occurred over the last several weeks, though a binding agreement has not yet been executed, and there remains a possibility that talks could dissolve. Hugging Face is currently consulting with financial advisers from investment banks to analyze the terms and broader implications of the buyout proposal.
Often termed the “GitHub of AI,” Hugging Face plays an indispensable role in open-source machine learning, providing testing and deployment infrastructure for 13 million users while hosting more than 2.5 million public models and 700,000 datasets.
The acquisition talks are part of a broader corporate investment push by Nvidia, which announced that it has allocated $18 billion for equity investments through the end of the year. Over the past twelve months, the company has aggressively purchased other AI startups, including foundation model developer Kumo, along with ShedMD, Illumex, and Groq.
Hugging Face previously rejected a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia at a $7 billion valuation, and Microsoft also conducted preliminary buyout discussions with Hugging Face before ultimately withdrawing.
