Nvidia is reportedly nearing a deal to buy Hugging Face, but nothing is signed
The Information reported Nvidia "agreed to buy" the open-model hub for roughly $13 billion, while Business Insider says talks could still collapse; neither company has commented.
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- The Information reported Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for approximately $12.9–13 billion.
- Business Insider, reporting separately, said talks "had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart."
- Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has issued a public statement confirming or denying a deal.
- Hugging Face hosts the largest public repository of open-weight AI models and datasets; an acquisition by Nvidia would hand a chipmaker unusual influence over the software layer much of the open-source AI ecosystem depends on.
— Business Insider was quoted as saying the talks could still "atomize". The reported wording is "fall apart"; the quotation has been corrected. The desk's error in drafting — a word that was never said should not have appeared inside quotation marks.
— The TechCrunch citation pointed at a URL that returns 404. The article is "Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisition"; the link and the cited headline have been corrected to match it. Caught by the link check, not by review.
Nvidia is reportedly close to acquiring Hugging Face, the platform that hosts the largest public library of open-weight AI models, according to The Information, which put the price at roughly $12.9 to $13 billion and said the two companies had already agreed to the deal. Business Insider, reporting separately, offered a more cautious account: talks were advanced but had "not yet produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart."
Neither company has confirmed the talks publicly. TechCrunch, which reviewed both reports, noted the discrepancy directly rather than resolving it, and no signed agreement, deal terms, or closing timeline have been independently verified as of publication.
If it happens, the acquisition would be notable less for the price than for what Hugging Face represents: the default distribution point for open-weight models from Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen and dozens of smaller labs, plus the datasets and tooling much of the research community builds on. Nvidia already supplies the hardware most of that ecosystem trains and runs on; owning the hub it's distributed through would be a different kind of leverage.
Readers should treat this as an unconfirmed report, not a completed acquisition — two outlets differ on whether an agreement actually exists, and neither company will say. But even as a rumor, the number is a useful marker of what infrastructure players think open-model distribution is now worth, and the strategic logic — a chipmaker controlling the platform independent labs rely on to reach users — would matter regardless of who ends up owning it.
Does Nvidia's reported $12.9bn acquisition of Hugging Face reach a signed agreement, or fall apart?
4 Sep 2026 NVIDIA officially announced on September 3, 2026, that it has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000, confirming the earlier transaction reports and securing control over the open-source platform. Read the follow-up