NVIDIA Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $12.93 Billion

NVIDIA agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000. That figure is from CEO Jensen Huang’s September 3, 2026 blog post. The deal is not closed. NVIDIA’s Form 8-K says the companies signed a definitive agreement on September 2, 2026, with close expected in the first half of 2027, subject to customary conditions including required regulatory approvals.

The announced $12.93 billion and the 8-K economics are not the same line item. The 8-K splits the transaction into an approximately $11.9 billion purchase price payable to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to certain adjustments, and an equity-based retention program of up to approximately $1.0 billion for Hugging Face employees joining NVIDIA. TechCrunch confirmed the $12.93 billion announcement the same day Huang posted.

The numbers

• Announced purchase figure: $12,930,300,000 (Huang, NVIDIA blog, September 3, 2026).
• Payable to Hugging Face stockholders: approximately $11.9 billion, subject to adjustments (NVIDIA 8-K).
• Retention: equity-based program of up to approximately $1.0 billion for Hugging Face employees joining NVIDIA (NVIDIA 8-K).
• Agreement date: September 2, 2026 (NVIDIA 8-K).
• Expected close: first half of 2027, subject to customary conditions including required regulatory approvals (NVIDIA 8-K).

What Hugging Face is, as NVIDIA stated it

Huang’s post is the source for the platform counts. More than 18 million developers, researchers, and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications. More than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover, evaluate, customize, and deploy AI. TechCrunch repeated the 3 million / 1 million / 18 million / 500,000 figures in its confirmation piece.

Huang wrote that Hugging Face will remain an open platform. Developers will choose models, frameworks, clouds, inference providers, and computing platforms. NVIDIA compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face. NVIDIA says it has released more than 500 models and more than 250 open datasets on the platform, and calls itself the largest contributor of open models and data there.

"I am honored that Clem came to me as he considered the next chapter of Hugging Face and believed NVIDIA would be a great home for the company, its community and the future of open models."

— Jensen Huang, NVIDIA blog, September 3, 2026

What the 8-K actually commits

The 8-K, signed by CFO Colette M. Kress on September 3, 2026, is the controlling public filing. NVIDIA says it has committed to keep Hugging Face’s platform open, consistent with Hugging Face’s existing practices. Under that commitment, Hugging Face would continue to permit model makers, developers, and users to upload and download models and datasets of their choosing and to support other silicon vendors.

The filing also flags regulatory risk. NVIDIA says other parties are lobbying to restrict or disadvantage open-source models, and that many widely used open-source models originated in China and are then downloaded and revised worldwide. Restrictions that limit support for models derived from any region, including China, “could have a material impact on Hugging Face’s platform,” the 8-K says. That is NVIDIA’s risk language, not a prediction.

Context, not the story

Ultrathink previously covered the July 2026 OpenAI/Hugging Face agent intrusion in 700 Agents, 70,000 Messages, Hugging Face Compromised and Hugging Face: 17,600 Actions and On-Prem GLM Forensics. This piece is the acquisition. Those remain the incident record.

TechCrunch, citing Crunchbase, says Hugging Face was founded in 2016 and has raised over $395 million, including a $235 million 2023 round led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from Google, Amazon, IBM, and NVIDIA. TechCrunch also quoted CEO Clem Delangue saying the company went to Jensen because larger-scale open source needs more compute, support, collaboration, and visibility. Those lines are TechCrunch’s, not NVIDIA’s filing.

The $12.93 billion figure is Huang’s announced number. The 8-K split is ~$11.9 billion to stockholders plus up to ~$1.0 billion retention. The deal is signed, not closed, until 1H 2027 and required regulatory approvals.