Nvidia Scoops Up Hugging Face for $13 Billion

Nvidia has made its most significant move yet in the AI industry by acquiring Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000. The open-source AI platform was founded in 2016 as a chatbot app but quickly pivoted to become the largest repository of open-source AI models and tools.

Hugging Face now has over 18 million users, with 200,000 companies utilizing the platform, which hosts more than 3 million models, along with 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the acquisition in a post on the company's website, stating that Hugging Face will continue to support open-source models from across the ecosystem.

Huang emphasized the importance of open models, saying they enable organizations to build advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch. He also highlighted their potential to advance AI safely and strengthen cybersecurity, sovereignty, innovation, and reach various industries worldwide.