Nvidia could also be making ready to maneuver from powering the AI increase to proudly owning extra of the ecosystem constructed on prime of it.
The Information reported that the chipmaker has agreed to accumulate Hugging Face, the extensively used platform for sharing AI fashions, datasets and growth instruments, for $12.9 billion.
Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has publicly introduced the transaction.
However, if accomplished, the deal would give Nvidia a deeper presence within the software program and developer layers of AI, placing it nearer to the place corporations select fashions and learn how to deploy them. It would additionally add to a broader 2026 growth spanning cloud infrastructure, enterprise information, networking, AI growth and the bodily methods wanted to run AI workloads.
For enterprise prospects, the larger query is now not simply which Nvidia GPU sits contained in the server. It is how a lot of the AI stack Nvidia finally desires to affect.
What eWeek discovered: Nvidia’s 2026 spending reaches far past GPUs
A evaluate of Nvidia’s 2026 acquisitions and investments reveals the corporate extending into a number of layers of the AI stack, fairly than merely increasing its semiconductor portfolio.
Nvidia acquired enterprise information firm Illumex and reportedly acquired predictive AI startup Kumo AI, in keeping with Forbes. It additionally invested $2 billion in cloud supplier CoreWeave, one other $2 billion in optical networking specialist Coherent, backed Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, and put capital into AI infrastructure corporations SB Energy and Cloverleaf Infrastructure.
The firm can be serving to entice considerably extra exterior capital to the AI infrastructure buildout. On Aug. 10, Nvidia introduced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to ascertain financing platforms aimed toward mobilizing greater than $500 billion in third-party capital over time.
Taken collectively, these strikes stretch from the electrical energy getting into an AI information heart to the fashions builders might finally entry by means of Hugging Face:
Power and information facilities → networking → compute → enterprise information → AI fashions → developer platforms
That might give Nvidia a wider position throughout the AI ecosystem than its conventional place as an accelerator provider would recommend.
Nvidia and Hugging Face have already got deep ties
A possible acquisition would construct on years of collaboration.
In an Axios report, Nvidia participated in Hugging Face’s $235 million Series D spherical in 2023, which valued the corporate at $4.5 billion. Google, Amazon, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Salesforce and Sound Ventures additionally participated.
The similar 12 months, Nvidia and Hugging Face introduced a partnership to combine DGX Cloud with the Hugging Face platform, giving builders entry to Nvidia computing infrastructure for coaching and tuning AI fashions. Their relationship has since continued by means of Nvidia’s DGX Cloud ecosystem.
At the reported $12.9 billion buy worth, Hugging Face can be valued at almost 3 times its 2023 valuation and roughly 80 occasions its reported $150 million in annualized income, in keeping with the Information.
That steep a number of suggests Nvidia can be paying for greater than Hugging Face’s present income, together with its strategic place within the open-model ecosystem and its attain amongst AI builders.
Hugging Face additionally occupies an vital place between mannequin creators and the builders deciding how these fashions are educated, personalized, and deployed. Owning the platform might give Nvidia a job earlier in enterprise AI selections, earlier than prospects select the infrastructure beneath their workloads.
Hugging Face might create a brand new stress for builders
Nvidia possession might additionally elevate questions on one among Hugging Face’s strengths: its capacity to work throughout competing infrastructure.
Hugging Face’s personal…
