SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA / RankWire.AI / – Nvidia has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face in a deal valued at about $12.93 billion. The companies signed the agreement on September 2, 2026. Nvidia will pay roughly $11.9 billion to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to customary adjustments. The transaction also includes up to about $1 billion in equity-based retention awards for eligible employees. Nvidia expects the acquisition to close in the first half of 2027, pending required approvals and closing conditions.
Hugging Face operates a widely used platform for artificial intelligence models, datasets, applications and developer tools. Nvidia says more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use the service. The platform hosts more than 3 million AI models and about 500,000 datasets. It also supports more than 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies use Hugging Face for tasks that include model discovery, testing, customization and deployment across different computing environments.
Hugging Face will continue supporting developers who use different models, frameworks, cloud providers and computing platforms. Nvidia said its hardware will not become a requirement for using the service. The platform will also continue hosting open-source and open-weight models from multiple developers and organizations. Support for different clouds and accelerator technologies will remain available. Nvidia has also committed to maintaining compatibility with silicon products made by companies other than Nvidia after the transaction closes.
Platform access will remain open across hardware choices
Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf founded Hugging Face in 2016. The company expanded from software tools into model hosting, datasets, applications and cloud-based AI development services. Hugging Face received a $4.5 billion valuation in an August 2023 funding round that raised $235 million. Nvidia had an existing relationship with the company before signing the acquisition agreement. Their previous work included projects that connected Hugging Face users with Nvidia computing resources and software.
Nvidia reported the agreement through a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3, 2026. The filing states that the acquisition remains pending. It also outlines conditions that must be satisfied before completion. Those requirements include regulatory approvals and customary closing provisions. Nvidia separately detailed commitments for Hugging Face operations after closing, including continued model and dataset access, multi-cloud functionality and support for accelerator hardware produced by other semiconductor companies.
Acquisition remains subject to regulatory approval
Nvidia already distributes a large collection of AI resources through the Hugging Face platform. The company says it has published more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets there. Nvidia also provides software libraries and development tools that users can adapt for their own projects. Hugging Face serves companies, researchers and independent developers across several stages of artificial intelligence development. Those activities include finding models, evaluating performance, customizing systems and deploying AI applications.
The Nvidia acquisition of Hugging Face will remain incomplete until the required conditions and approvals are satisfied. Nvidia currently expects the $12.93 billion transaction to close during the first half of 2027. Under the announced commitments, Hugging Face will continue supporting multiple clouds, frameworks, inference providers and computing platforms. Developers will also retain access to hardware choices beyond Nvidia products. Until the deal closes, Nvidia and Hugging Face will continue operating as separate companies under the signed agreement.