Report: Nvidia to acquire AI model hub Hugging Face for $13 billion

Nvidia is reportedly preparing to acquire Hugging Face, the platform widely regarded as the go-to hub for storing, downloading, and building open-weight AI models, in a deal valued at around $13 billion. While Hugging Face's business is said to be not yet profitable, its central role in the open-model ecosystem makes it a strategically valuable target regardless of current earnings.

The acquisition could also give Nvidia a second win: a chance to restart its own cloud AI business plans, which had previously struggled to gain traction on their own.

Competitive stakes

The timing is notable, as frontier AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic have started investing in their own specialized hardware to train and run models, aiming for vertical integration and reduced dependence on Nvidia's chips. By bringing Hugging Face into its portfolio, Nvidia could gain leverage to keep that segment of the market reliant on its hardware.

Robotics angle

Hugging Face is best known for hosting large language models, but it has been expanding into models used for robotics and other physical AI applications. Since Nvidia is already a major player in that space, the acquisition could open further opportunities there down the line.