Nvidia has officially entered into an agreement to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, signaling the chipmaker’s strategic expansion from hardware manufacturing into the broader artificial intelligence software ecosystem. The deal, which had been anticipated following reports by The Information last week, positions Nvidia further up the AI value chain.
In a blog post released on Thursday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that the acquisition would allow the company to scale Hugging Face’s existing open-source platform while strengthening its infrastructure. “Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide,” Huang wrote, affirming that the site would “remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem.”
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue revealed to CNBC that the initiative for the merger originated from his side. He stated that the company approached Huang during the summer, and negotiations progressed rapidly, resulting in the current agreement within just a few weeks. “During the summer, I think we realized that Hugging Face and open source AI in general was at the turning point, and that it needed more, more resources, more scale, more visibility,” Delangue told Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.”
Hugging Face approached Nvidia? That is a bold move. I wonder how open-source spirit survives this acquisition.
Wow, twelve point nine billion! The AI bubble must be inflating rapidly right now. Just wait and see.
As a developer, I just hope the platform doesn’t get paywalled. Open source means nothing if it’s locked away behind a corporate wall.