# Nvidia signs for Hugging Face at $12.93 billion, and files its neutrality pledge in an 8-K

URL: https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/posts/2026-09-04-nvidia-signs-hugging-face-deal/
Category: Business
Published: 2026-09-04
Author: the-deep-feed
Tags: nvidia, hugging-face, acquisitions, open-weights, llama-cpp
Kind: news

> Nvidia signed a definitive agreement on September 2 to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, about 86 times the hub's reported revenue, after Hugging Face's chief executive approached Jensen Huang over the summer and other bidders, by Huang's account, set the price.

## TL;DR

- **Nvidia** signed on **September 2** to buy Hugging Face for **$12,930,300,000**: about **$11.9 billion** to stockholders plus up to **$1.0 billion** in retention equity, closing in the first half of 2027 subject to regulatory approvals.
- **Clément Delangue** approached **Jensen Huang** over the summer, and Huang told CNBC that "there are other bidders, and $12.9 billion is what it took to close the deal." The price is about **86 times** the hub's reported $150 million in annualized revenue.
- Nvidia put an openness commitment in its **8-K**, and the first reactions split: **The Register** called the deal an antitrust magnet, while llama.cpp creator **Georgi Gerganov** said the project will stay hardware-agnostic.

On Thursday, September 3, **Nvidia** disclosed in a [Form 8-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000078/nvda-20260902.htm) that it had signed a definitive agreement the day before to acquire **Hugging Face**, the hub where most open-weight AI models are published and downloaded. Jensen Huang's [blog post](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/) put the price at $12,930,300,000, a figure whose first six digits, 129303, are the decimal code point of the hugging-face emoji that gave the company its name. The pun is the light part. The price is about 86 times the hub's reported revenue, Huang said on air that it was what it took to beat other bidders, and the only formal promise that the hub stays neutral is a paragraph Nvidia chose to file with the SEC.

# The terms in the filing

The 8-K, filed under Item 8.01 ("Other Events"), gives the structure. The transaction "includes 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." It is "expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions, including receipt of required regulatory approvals." The filing does not name the approvals, a termination fee or an outside date.

The same filing carries the commitment. Nvidia "has committed to, among other things, keep Hugging Face's platform open, consistent with Hugging Face's existing practices," under which 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."

Huang's blog post states the pledge in plainer terms: "NVIDIA compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face," and the platform "will continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment." It also lists what Nvidia is buying: more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators sharing more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, with more than 200,000 companies using the platform.

Against that reach, the business is small. [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-confirms-it-will-buy-hugging-face-for-12-9-billion/), citing The Information, puts Hugging Face's annualized revenue at $150 million, which makes the headline price about 86 times sales. The last priced round, in 2023, valued the company at $4.5 billion. Late last year, according to the Financial Times account cited by [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-in-talks-to-buy-hugging-face-13-billion-dollars-2026-8), Hugging Face turned down a $500 million Nvidia investment at a $7 billion valuation because it did not want a dominant investor that could sway its decisions.

# Who approached whom, and what set the price

The talks surfaced a week early. On the night of Wednesday, August 26, Business Insider reported that Nvidia had been in talks to buy Hugging Face for more than $13 billion, that "the companies have not yet reached a deal," and that Microsoft had also met with Hugging Face but was no longer in talks. The same night, [TechCrunch reported](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/nvidia-closes-in-on-hugging-face-acquisition/), The Information said Nvidia had agreed to pay $12.9 billion, citing one source. The signed agreement followed seven days later.

The seller made the first move. Huang wrote that he was "honored that Clem came to me as he considered the next chapter of Hugging Face." Delangue told [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-agrees-to-buy-hugging-face-for-almost-13-billion-ai-expansion.html) that the company approached Huang over the summer, "and a few weeks later, here we are." His announcement on X said the same:

> 10 years after starting Hugging Face, open-source AI is at an inflection point. Thanks to the community, we've shown that it can be a complement, and even an alternative, to closed-source APIs. But for it to happen at larger scale, it needs more compute, more support, more collaboration and more visibility. That's why we went to talk to Jensen, who offered to do exactly that with us.
>
> — [@ClementDelangue](https://x.com/ClementDelangue/status/2095482998674112733), Sep 3, 2026

On [Squawk Box](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/cnbc-exclusive-transcript-nvidia-founder-ceo-jensen-huang-and-hugging-face-ceo-clment-delangue-speak-with-cnbcs-becky-quick-on-squawk-box-today.html), Becky Quick asked whether the catalyst was the summer breach in which OpenAI's agents broke into Hugging Face. Delangue said the episode showed "we couldn't defend ourselves with proprietary closed source APIs, so we had to use open models to defend ourselves." Asked how the parties reached $12.93 billion, Huang was direct: "there are other bidders, and $12.9 billion is what it took to close the deal, and it's worth every single penny." Neither man would name the other bidders. "It doesn't matter who the other bidders were," Huang said. "It only matters who wins."

Huang also gave the strategic rationale in one sentence: "cloud service providers represents only half of Nvidia's business, and yet the other half of our business are really largely driven by open models." Read that way, the hub is where half of Nvidia's demand chooses its models. Quick asked whether Nvidia had paid to keep the hub out of others' hands, and Huang said no: "we paid $12.9 billion because, one, that's what it's worth, and, two, open models means so much to us." Delangue said the three founders and the team are joining Nvidia, that Hugging Face will "continue to run independently neutral platform within the Nvidia team," and that the goal is 100 million builders on the platform, up from 18 million. Justin Boitano, Nvidia's vice president of enterprise computing, told a press Q&A that "regulators are going to see this as overwhelmingly positive," according to [Wccftech](https://wccftech.com/nvidia-insists-its-12-93-billion-acquisition-of-hugging-face-will-escape-antitrust-scrutiny-calling-it-a-deconcentration-platform/).

# The first day of reactions

Within a day of the announcement, the open-source community had split along a predictable line: commentators who see Nvidia as a dominant chip vendor were alarmed, and maintainers who work with it were not.

The sharpest case against came from [The Register](https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/03/hugging-face-is-too-important-to-fall-into-nvidias-hands/5294363), where Tobias Mann argued that "as antitrust magnets go, Nvidia buying Hugging Face takes the cake." His point was that Nvidia would not need to drop support for rival hardware to tilt the hub. It "could simply ensure that the models and frameworks it favors are always better documented, and run first on its kit," or subsidize Nvidia-based compute on Hugging Face's endpoints. "You can claim until your face is red that the platform is still 'open,'" he wrote, "but just because something is open doesn't mean it's unbiased."

The [Hacker News thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548952) on CNBC's story mixed congratulations with doubt about the price. One commenter [wrote](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49550275) that they did not "understand why the AI equivalent of Maven Central is worth 12.9 billion dollars." Another [raised the conflict](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49551941) of Nvidia "massively financing the closed-models companies, which stand to lose when open model project(s) take off." Others noted the seller's move: "They approached Nvidia to start the conversation," [one wrote](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49549753). "I guess sometimes great companies are sold, not just bought."

The maintainer with the most at stake endorsed the deal. Georgi Gerganov, whose ggml team behind llama.cpp [joined Hugging Face in February](https://huggingface.co/blog/ggml-joins-hf), wrote on September 4 that Nvidia engineers had contributed to the codebase for more than a year, and set a line for the project:

> Going forward, llama.cpp/ggml will stick to its founding principles. One of the most important  qualities of the project is to be hardware-agnostic. Therefore the development and support of all backends will continue to be done as usual - driven and shaped by the community. Open to everyone who is willing to participate.
>
> — [@ggerganov](https://x.com/ggerganov/status/2095897173376618881), Sep 4, 2026

Microsoft's Satya Nadella, whose company had also met with Hugging Face according to Business Insider, [congratulated both chief executives](https://x.com/satyanadella/status/2095587182039969861) and said he was looking forward to "the continued partnership."

# What the pledge has to carry until 2027

As of September 4, the filing names no specific regulator, none of the coverage reports a review opening, and the deal has up to ten months to close. Until then, the openness commitment exists in a blog post, an Item 8.01 paragraph and statements made on television. None of them gives the commitment a duration, names who could enforce it, or addresses how rival chips will be placed on Hugging Face's own inference endpoints or what Nvidia may do with the hub's download data. Those are the terms a regulator would ask about if one reviews the deal, and the terms developers will watch in the meantime.

The structure of the sale is the reason the question is live. The hub's chief executive went looking for a buyer, more than one showed up, and the winner is the dominant hardware platform for AI, whose chief executive says open models drive half its business. In August, Stripe's reported deal for OpenRouter [bought the meter on inference demand](/posts/2026-08-18-stripe-bought-the-meter/). Nvidia has now agreed to buy the shelf where open models are stocked, and until the deal closes the shelf's neutrality rests on the buyer's word and the community's willingness to take it.

## Sources

- [NVIDIA — Form 8-K, Item 8.01: definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face (Sep 3, 2026)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000078/nvda-20260902.htm)
- [NVIDIA Blog — NVIDIA to Acquire Hugging Face (Sep 3, 2026)](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/)
- [CNBC — Transcript: Jensen Huang and Clément Delangue on Squawk Box (Sep 3, 2026)](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/cnbc-exclusive-transcript-nvidia-founder-ceo-jensen-huang-and-hugging-face-ceo-clment-delangue-speak-with-cnbcs-becky-quick-on-squawk-box-today.html)
- [CNBC — Hugging Face approached Nvidia's Huang weeks ahead of $12.9B acquisition, CEO tells CNBC (Sep 3, 2026)](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-agrees-to-buy-hugging-face-for-almost-13-billion-ai-expansion.html)
- [Business Insider — Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face for more than $13 billion (Aug 26, 2026)](https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-in-talks-to-buy-hugging-face-13-billion-dollars-2026-8)
- [The Register — Hugging Face is too important to fall into Nvidia's hands (Sep 3, 2026)](https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/03/hugging-face-is-too-important-to-fall-into-nvidias-hands/5294363)

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