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Mergers & AcquisitionsMediumUpdated•Originally published 4 September 2026•Updated 4 September 2026•
2 min read

Nvidia Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $12.93 Billion, Targeting First-Half 2027 Close

Key Facts

1The announced total transaction value is $12.9303 billion, and the acquisition has not yet closed.
2The deal includes about $11.9 billion for shareholders and an equity retention program of up to about $1 billion.
3Nvidia targets closing in the first half of 2027, subject to conditions and regulatory approvals.
4Nvidia says Hugging Face has more than 18 million users, more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications and is used by more than 200,000 companies.

Nvidia entered a definitive agreement on September 2, 2026, to acquire Hugging Face in a transaction the company valued at $12.9303 billion. The acquisition has not closed, contrary to the status implied by the original report.

The transaction includes about $11.9 billion payable to Hugging Face shareholders and an equity-based retention program of up to about $1 billion for employees joining Nvidia. Closing is expected in the first half of 2027, subject to customary conditions and required regulatory approvals.

Hugging Face operates a platform and community for developing, sharing and deploying open-source models, datasets and applications. Nvidia says more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use it to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, while more than 200,000 companies use the platform.

Nvidia said Hugging Face will remain open, allowing developers to choose their models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms. Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face, the company said.

The company also committed to supporting open-source and open-weight models from across the ecosystem, as well as multicloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment. Delivery on those commitments will be an important issue for platform users and Nvidia's hardware competitors.

The companies already have an established technical relationship: Nvidia says it has released more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets on Hugging Face. Nvidia expects its resources and engineering infrastructure to enhance platform reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment, but those remain anticipated benefits rather than realized results.

For investors, the main transaction risks concern regulatory clearance and execution after completion. Nvidia's filing says government rules for open-source models may restrict available models or datasets, add compliance costs and impair expected transaction benefits.

Regulatory review is the immediate milestone, with Nvidia expecting completion in the first half of 2027. Completion will allow investors to assess whether Nvidia meets its stated commitments concerning access to model, cloud-service and hardware-provider choices. For now, the transaction is pending rather than completed.