Nvidia Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion in AI Ecosystem Land Grab
新智元 · wechat · 2026-08-27
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source model hub, for $12.9 billion, beating out other tech giants after tense, secretive negotiations. The price is nearly 3x Hugging Face's 2023 valuation of $4.5B and roughly 80-130x its $150M ARR—a far richer multiple than Microsoft's $7.5B GitHub deal.
Founded in 2016 as a teen chatbot startup, Hugging Face pivoted to dominance by open-sourcing its Transformers library. It now hosts 2M+ models, 500K datasets, and 13M registered users—the "GitHub of AI." Recent expansion includes hiring llama.cpp creator Georgi Gerganov, acquiring Pollen Robotics (selling robots from $100 arms to a $2,500 open humanoid), and integrating Nvidia's Isaac GR00T.
For Nvidia, the deal secures the AI developer distribution layer and an outlet for DGX Cloud compute, countering OpenAI/Anthropic chip in-house efforts. The biggest risk: Hugging Face's neutrality across Nvidia/AMD/Intel hardware underpinned its trust—whether developers stay after a full acquisition will decide if the bet pays off.
Related event: NVIDIA Reportedly Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for ~$12.9B(60 posts)→
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