Nvidia buys Hugging Face, the GitHub of AI, for $13 billion

Nvidia has agreed to buy AI model platform Hugging Face for $13 billion, in the latest step by the $5.4 trillion chip giant to use its financial might to accelerate the technology’s boom while exerting greater control over the industry. Hugging Face, which only last year turned down a large investment from Nvidia at a $7 billion valuation to maintain its independence, serves as a repository for millions of models and data sets and has become a champion of “open” AI systems. Nvidia said the goal

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Nvidia, a major chip manufacturer, has agreed to purchase Hugging Face, a platform that hosts millions of open artificial intelligence models and datasets, for $13 billion. Hugging Face is significant because it serves as a key distribution channel for open-weight AI models, which are publicly designed systems that users can download and customize rather than proprietary models controlled by single companies. The acquisition matters because it gives Nvidia control over a platform used by over 18 million developers and more than 200,000 companies, while Nvidia has pledged to keep the platform open to the broader AI ecosystem. The deal reflects Nvidia's strategy to expand its influence across the AI industry by investing in companies and infrastructure that increase demand for its chips and reduce its reliance on a small number of customers.