Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, a hosting hub for open AI models and datasets. Nvidia confirmed the definitive agreement on Thursday after weeks of industry speculation. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval. Nvidia pledged to keep the platform open to all model makers, developers and users. Jensen Huang said open models let organisations build without training everything themselves. Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue said the platform needs more compute, support and visibility. Forrester analyst Charlie Dai expects openness to be preserved at first. He advised enterprise users to watch for later shifts and to assess the risk of deeper ties to Nvidia's own tooling. Critics also question the circular flow of money between AI suppliers and their customers.
What changed
Hugging Face was independent and widely treated as a neutral hub for open models.
- $12.9B purchase price
- close expected in H1 2027
What you need to act on it
- regulatory approval
- deal close expected in first half of 2027
Sources