Nvidia has completed the acquisition of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion

Image credit: Nvidia/Hugging Face

Nvidia has agreed to purchase Hugging Face, an AI platform, at a valuation of $12.9 billion.

According to BBC News, Nvidia plans to pay approximately $11.9 billion to the platform's investors, with the potential inclusion of up to $1 billion in stock incentives. Among the investors in Hugging Face, a platform focusing on open-source AI, are Amazon, AMD, and Intel.

A blog post from Nvidia's president and CEO, Jensen Huang, assures that Hugging Face will remain open-source. Developers using the platform will not be required to integrate Nvidia technology.

Huang noted that this acquisition is poised to enhance Nvidia's growth and improve the infrastructure of Hugging Face on a global scale. "Nvidia's infrastructure, engineering, and worldwide presence can enhance the platform's reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference, and deployment capabilities, while maintaining the open ecosystem that Hugging Face is known for."

Established in 2016 in New York City, Hugging Face was founded by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf.

In an interview with CNBC, Clément Delangue explained that the alliance was pursued to gain additional resources, scale, and visibility, with Nvidia seen as an ideal match for the platform.

Being the top contributor to Hugging Face, Nvidia has already released over 500 models and more than 250 open datasets. Huang expressed his gratitude with Delangue's choice of Nvidia for the company’s next steps, emphasizing the shared vision to expand Hugging Face's influence and capabilities.

"To the millions of builders on Hugging Face: thank you for pushing the boundaries of what is possible. We can't wait to build the future together with you. Together, we will make AI more open, more capable and more accessible to people and institutions around the world," Huang added.