Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face, the popular AI platform for sharing and building with open-source models, in what could be one of the chip giant’s biggest deals yet.
The two parties have had acquisition conversations in recent weeks about a deal that would value Hugging Face at more than $13 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The companies have not yet reached a deal, and the talks could still fall apart, the person said. Themoneytimes on Sunday was the first to report that Hugging Face was fielding takeover interest.
Nvidia has increased its dealmaking pace with its substantial cash reserves. The company announced Wednesday that it has $18 billion committed to equity investments for the remainder of its fiscal year, on top of $47.9 billion already held in private companies.
Microsoft also met with Hugging Face, but the individual and another source indicated that talks are not currently ongoing.
Nvidia already maintains a strong relationship with Hugging Face. The chipmaker participated in its $235 million funding round in 2023 that valued it at $4.5 billion.
Hugging Face declined a $500 million investment offer from Nvidia late last year that would have valued it at $7 billion, Themoneytimes previously reported. At that time, Hugging Face stated it did not wish to have a dominant investor capable of influencing decisions.
Hugging Face serves as the centerpiece of the open-source AI ecosystem, hosting millions of AI models and datasets that developers can build upon. Acquiring the platform could provide Nvidia with greater access to those developers — and potentially drive more workloads onto its chips.
Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf.