NVIDIA Agrees to Buy Hugging Face in $12,930,300,000 Deal Disclosed by Jensen Huang

NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the open platform for AI models, datasets and applications, in a transaction announced on September 3, 2026. Chief executive Jensen Huang disclosed an aggregate figure of $12,930,300,000 in a post on the company’s official blog, and NVIDIA set out the transaction’s structure in a regulatory filing made the same day.

According to the Form 8-K NVIDIA filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, Inc. on September 2, 2026. The filing describes Hugging Face as a company operating a platform and community for developing, sharing and deploying open-source models, datasets and applications.

Deal Terms and Closing Timeline

The 8-K states that the transaction includes an approximately $11.9 billion purchase price payable to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to certain adjustments. Alongside the purchase price sits an equity-based retention program of up to approximately $1.0 billion for Hugging Face employees joining NVIDIA. Huang’s blog post presented the single combined figure of $12,930,300,000 for the agreement.

NVIDIA expects the transaction to close in the first half of 2027. That timeline is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions, including receipt of required regulatory approvals, according to the filing.

The filing also records the company’s stated purpose for the deal. NVIDIA expects the acquisition to provide additional resources to Hugging Face and to support developers building, sharing and deploying open models and applications.

Open Platform Commitments

The 8-K records a commitment by NVIDIA to keep Hugging Face’s platform open, consistent with Hugging Face’s existing practices. Under that commitment, Hugging Face would continue to permit model makers, developers and users to upload and download models and datasets of their choosing, and it would continue to support other silicon vendors.

Huang’s blog post expands on the same undertakings in the company’s own words. Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem, he wrote, with developers choosing the models, frameworks, clouds, inference service providers and computing platforms they want. NVIDIA compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.

The post adds that Hugging Face will continue to support open source and open weight models from every model builder across the ecosystem. It will also continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment, so builders can use the hardware and infrastructure that best fit their work.

The Platform NVIDIA Is Buying

Huang’s post sets out the platform’s current scale as the company presents it. More than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, according to NVIDIA. More than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover, evaluate, customize and deploy AI.

The post credits co-founders Clem, Julien, Thomas and the wider Hugging Face team with building what Huang called a vibrant home for the open model developer community over the past decade. He wrote that he was honored that Clem came to him as he considered the next chapter of Hugging Face and believed NVIDIA would be a great home for the company, its community and the future of open models.

Huang wrote that the two companies share this vision. The Hugging Face team will now bring their passion and expertise to a much larger canvas, he added, retaining the company’s brand.

NVIDIA’s Existing Open-Model Ties

The acquisition follows years of NVIDIA involvement with the platform it is buying. Huang’s post states that NVIDIA has been committed to open weight models for years, demonstrated by multiyear investments and major contributions to open source platforms, including Hugging Face itself.

NVIDIA is the largest contributor of open models and data to Hugging Face, according to the post, having released more than 500 models on the platform and more than 250 open datasets. The company said its contributions continue to grow, and that it builds its own models, libraries and tools in the open so developers everywhere can use, modify and build on top of them.

Huang also noted that he recently coauthored an open letter on the importance of open weights to the AI economy, joined by leaders from across the industry. The letter’s point, as he described it, was that open weights broaden access to AI and help ensure that AI leadership is distributed across companies, institutions and communities.

Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch, Huang wrote, and they enable organizations to match the right model to the right job. He presented that as the route for AI to advance safely, strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty, accelerate innovation, and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and Main Street businesses around the world.

Risks Set Out in the Filing

The 8-K supplements the acquisition risk factors in NVIDIA’s most recent annual and quarterly reports with a new one tied to the deal. In it, the company warns that government restrictions may negatively impact its business and the Hugging Face platform.

Demand for open-source foundation models and applications based on them promotes the use of NVIDIA’s products worldwide and sustains the Hugging Face platform, the filing states. The company said other parties are actively lobbying the US government and other stakeholders worldwide to adopt legislative or regulatory measures that would restrict or disadvantage open-source models and the customers of them.

Governments may impose new or additional requirements governing the development, training, release, distribution, access, transfer, deployment or use of AI models, including open-source models, according to the filing. Such requirements could restrict the models or datasets available through Hugging Face, require changes to its platform or practices, delay or restrict offerings, increase compliance costs, or result in investigations or enforcement actions.

The filing also notes that many of the world’s most popular and successful open-source models originated in China and are then downloaded, revised, fine-tuned and tested by developers in the United States and worldwide. Any regulatory control or other restriction limiting NVIDIA’s ability to provide products and services that support models derived from any region, including China, could have a material impact on Hugging Face’s platform and on NVIDIA’s business, operating results and financial condition, the company stated.

Huang’s post closes on the plan for the combined companies. NVIDIA’s infrastructure, engineering and global reach can help improve platform reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment capabilities, he wrote, while preserving the open ecosystem that made Hugging Face foundational. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals before its targeted close in the first half of 2027.