NVIDIA
Jensen brought the chequebook
Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, as it expands beyond chips and further into AI software.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Hugging Face will stay open to the wider AI community.
Nvidia plans to give the platform more funding, improve its infrastructure and help more developers and organisations use it.
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said he approached Nvidia over the summer because the company needed more money, scale and support to keep growing.
The deal came together quickly.
In brief:
Nvidia is buying Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.
Hugging Face will stay open to the wider AI community.
Nvidia is expanding further into AI software and developer tools.
Beyond the chip aisle
It would be Nvidia’s second-biggest acquisition, after its $20 billion purchase of Groq assets in December.
The deal also shows Nvidia is looking to become a bigger player in AI beyond the GPUs it is best known for.
Hugging Face was also recently hit by a cyberattack.
Delangue said the incident showed why open-source AI matters, while Huang said open models could help security teams work together to defend against attacks.
“Can we have some help? How about $13B?” - MV