Nvidia Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion

TechCrunch reported on 26 August 2026 at 23:32 PDT that Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, citing The Information and a source familiar with the matter. Business Insider said the same night that talks valuing the company at more than $13 billion had not produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart.

What a $12.9 billion Hugging Face price would buy

This is a reported agreement, not a closed filing. TechCrunch's Wednesday-night piece said Nvidia has agreed to the $12.9 billion purchase. The Information is the originating outlet. The source is one person familiar with the matter. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face had commented as of publication. TechCrunch flagged Nvidia's silence because the company has moved quickly in the past to address reports it considers inaccurate.

Business Insider, which first reported over the weekend that Hugging Face was fielding takeover interest, said the talks — which would value the company at more than $13 billion — had not yet produced a signed agreement and could still atomize. Those two sentences have to sit next to each other. $12.9 billion is The Information's agreed-price figure. More than $13 billion is Business Insider's unsigned-talks figure. They are not the same claim.

Do not collapse this into the earlier sale-talks story. If you already logged Hugging Face exploring a $13 billion sale, keep that piece as the bid-and-interest file. This file is the Wednesday-night report that Nvidia agreed to a $12.9 billion purchase. Sale talks are not an agreement. An unsigned agreement is not a close.

The last known mark is $4.5 billion. Hugging Face raised $235 million in 2023 in a round led by Salesforce Ventures, with Alphabet's GV, IBM Ventures, and Nvidia among the other backers. Late last year it turned down a $500 million Nvidia investment that would have valued it at $7 billion, the Financial Times reported, because it did not want a dominant investor that could sway its decisions. TechCrunch's argument for why a buyout might land now is that selling the company is different from taking one giant backer while staying independent.

The Information said Hugging Face was recently generating about $150 million a year in revenue, up from roughly $100 million two months earlier. CEO Clem Delangue told TechCrunch last month the company was "close to profitability." A price near $13 billion on that revenue is the multiple. Do not invent an EBITDA line or a close date.

Why Nvidia would want the open-source hub

Hugging Face, founded in 2016, is one of the most popular hubs where developers share and download open-source AI models. TechCrunch framed the industrial logic as protecting Nvidia's chip position. OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Anthropic are building their own AI chips to lessen their reliance on Nvidia. A larger open-source model ecosystem gives customers alternatives to those closed labs and keeps more of the market on Nvidia hardware. That is also why, TechCrunch wrote, Nvidia has already poured tens of billions of dollars into building its own open-source AI models.

Delangue has spent much of this year publicly aligned with Nvidia's open-source push. On CBS's Face the Nation earlier this month he said Hugging Face used an Nvidia-modified version of a Chinese open-source model to defend itself after a cyberattack, and he pointed to a letter signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and 24 other companies, including Hugging Face, urging the U.S. government to support open models rather than restrict them. In a late-July CNBC interview he said China is "clearly dominating" open-source AI.

If you already have OpenAI's official report on the Hugging Face incident on the same desk, keep the July security event and this Wednesday-night bid on two lines. The official report is a post-mortem. This story is a reported acquisition.

The deal would also be a path back into cloud. Nvidia reportedly scaled back DGX Cloud about a year ago. The Information said owning Hugging Face — which already helps developers run models on rented compute — could let Nvidia re-enter that market without starting from scratch. There is a balance-sheet angle too. Nvidia has promised to help cover the cost of tens of billions of dollars in cloud computing deals for its customers. If those customers do not use all the capacity they reserved, Nvidia could be stuck with it. Owning Hugging Face would give Nvidia a channel to sell unused capacity to Hugging Face customers.

Stripe's recent purchase of OpenRouter is the competitive color, not the price. OpenRouter was valued at $1.3 billion in a May Series B. Stripe reportedly paid more than $7 billion earlier this month. TechCrunch used that as the reason Hugging Face would want Nvidia's deeper pockets as other infrastructure names get pulled into larger outfits. Do not treat the OpenRouter multiple as Hugging Face's multiple.

If you already track Alabama's attorney general subpoenaing OpenAI over the Hugging Face hack, keep the legal file and the M&A file apart. A subpoena is a process story. $12.9 billion is a reported purchase price.

What is still unsigned after Wednesday night

Put the sourcing stack in the wrapper. The Information said Nvidia agreed to $12.9 billion. Business Insider said the talks could still fall apart. Neither company commented. There is no signed-agreement exhibit in the TechCrunch piece and no close date.

The useful pin is: on 26 August 2026 at 23:32 PDT, TechCrunch reported that Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, citing The Information and a source familiar with the matter; Business Insider said the same night that talks valuing the company at more than $13 billion had not produced a signed agreement; Hugging Face last raised $235 million in 2023 at $4.5 billion, turned down a $500 million Nvidia check at $7 billion, and was recently doing about $150 million of annual revenue; Delangue said the company was close to profitability; the industrial case is an open-source distribution foothold plus unused cloud capacity.

If your team already marked Hugging Face as "in play at $13 billion," replace that line. The new fact is a reported $12.9 billion Nvidia agreement that is still unsigned.

Sources

• Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisition — TechCrunch, 26 August 2026