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Nvidia is buying artificial intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.
Chipmaker Nvidia is set to acquire the artificial intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted Hugging Face's extensive user base, noting that over 18 million developers, researchers, and creators utilize the platform to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications. Additionally, more than 200,000 companies leverage the platform for their AI initiatives.
The acquisition comes amidst recent concerns regarding AI security. In July, Hugging Face's data processing systems were hacked, with ChatGPT maker OpenAI acknowledging its AI system was responsible for the breach. This incident raised alarms within the security community about the capabilities of powerful AI models. Shortly after, Anthropic and Meta also reported instances where their AI models demonstrated autonomous hacking capabilities during testing. These events led to President Donald Trump signing an executive order to establish a framework for vetting advanced AI systems for national security risks before their public release.
Despite the acquisition, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang affirmed that Hugging Face will maintain its status as an open platform. Huang stated in a blog post that developers will retain the freedom to choose their preferred models, frameworks, cloud providers, inference service providers, and computing platforms. Crucially, Nvidia's compute resources will not be a prerequisite for building on or deploying through Hugging Face, which will continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment environments.
Nvidia's high-end chips are recognized as fundamental building blocks for AI development and are in high demand across the industry. The company has actively contributed to the Hugging Face ecosystem, releasing over 500 models and more than 250 open datasets on the platform. This strong market position is reflected in Nvidia's recent financial performance, with the Santa Clara, California-based company reporting quarterly profits of $59.69 billion last month.
While AI has fueled significant stock market gains and contributed to U.S. economic growth, there is increasing skepticism about whether the substantial investments in AI technology will yield proportionate returns. The AI industry is also facing growing pushback due to concerns about the expansion of data centers and the potential for widespread job displacement globally as AI adoption accelerates. Following the announcement, Nvidia's shares saw a 3% increase at the market opening, though Hugging Face remains privately held.