Nvidia Reportedly Buys Hugging Face for $13 Billion as Open-Weight AI Draws Fresh Deal Rush
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 28
Nvidia Reportedly Buys Hugging Face for $13 Billion as Open-Weight AI Draws Fresh Deal Rush
3 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 28
Summary
$13 billion would give Nvidia control of Hugging Face, the leading U.S. platform for sharing open-weight AI models, benchmarks and developer tools.
The reported deal would help Nvidia reduce reliance on hyperscalers and frontier labs by steering a large open-model developer base toward its chips, standards and model business.
That push comes as OpenAI and Google develop their own inference chips and as companies test cheaper open models from Chinese players including Moonshot, DeepSeek and Alibaba.
Open-weight adoption is still limited—about 6% of companies and 2% of software engineers use such models in cited surveys—but demand is rising for high-volume, customizable workloads.
The acquisition would extend a broader consolidation wave after Nvidia's $6 billion Poolside deal and Stripe's more than $7 billion OpenRouter purchase.