NVIDIA reportedly in talks to buy Hugging Face for ~$13B in open-source AI power play
TheZachMueller · x · 2026-10-11
NVIDIA is reportedly in talks to acquire Hugging Face for roughly $12.9-14 billion (including a $1B retention package), with a deal possible as soon as this week; neither company has commented.
- This follows NVIDIA's Poolside deal: a $6B non-exclusive Model Factory license, $1B in equity, and jobs for 100+ engineers
- NVIDIA is already the biggest corporate publisher on Hugging Face, adding 500+ repos with real traction since September 2025 — ahead of Alibaba Cloud, Hugging Face itself, and Tencent
- The thesis: open models are products with billions in COGS priced at zero; VC can't fund that forever, but NVIDIA can because adoption sells compute
- If it closes, it should strengthen Nemotron and America's ability to rival China in open models
Strategy in three words: influence through inference.
More from Companies & People
- Leak: X may rename Premium to SUBSCRIPTION, hinting at bundled X, Grok and Cursor plan — nima_owji · 2026-10-11
- Amazon reportedly blocks X's @bot, and Linus Ekenstam thinks that's a mistake — LinusEkenstam · 2026-10-11
- No Priors pod: Reflection AI cofounder Misha Laskin on China, open models, and frontier AI — saranormous · 2026-10-11
- Every Ditched Personal Agents: Dan Shipper's OpenClaw 'Died' and No One Restarted It — every · 2026-10-11
- Elon Musk reportedly renames Tesla AI and SpaceX AI to 'Super Intelligence' in two days — ns123abc · 2026-10-11
- Nathan Lambert jokes he'll be the last open-models person Nvidia hasn't acquired by 2027 — natolambert · 2026-10-11