Nvidia wants to buy Hugging Face in $13 billion blockbuster AI deal

Nvidia is reportedly preparing to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9bn A 2023 investment round valued the company at $4.5bn Nvidia is on a roll of investing heavily in other companies Nvidia has reportedly spent the past couple of weeks actively engaging with Hugging Face to explore an acquisition deal

<![CDATA[ <article> <ul><li><strong>Nvidia is reportedly preparing to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9bn</strong></li><li><strong>A 2023 investment round valued the company at $4.5bn</strong></li><li><strong>Nvidia is on a roll of investing heavily in other companies</strong></li></ul><p>Nvidia has reportedly spent the past couple of weeks actively engaging with Hugging Face to explore an acquisition deal worth an estimated $12.9 billion, according to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-in-talks-to-buy-hugging-face-13-billion-dollars-2026-8" target="_blank"><em>Business Insider</em></a><em> </em>reporting, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.</p><p>To date, the companies are yet to reach an agreement, but with the current valuation speculations, it would make a Hugging Face acquisition one of Nvidia's largest acquisitions to date.</p><p>Importantly, this wouldn't be the chipmaker's first run-in with Hugging Face – it took part in a $235 million funding round in 2023. At that time, Hugging Face's valuation was around $4.5 billion - making today's valuation nearly three times higher.</p><h2 id="nvidia-and-hugging-face">Nvidia and Hugging Face</h2><p>While this may be one of Nvidia's biggest acquisitions to date, it's just one of a growing number, as the company recently admitted it had $18 billion committed to equity investments for the rest of the financial year, and it already holds $47.9 billion in private company stock.</p><p>However, there's still a shadow over the potential Nvidia acquisition, with Hugging Face previously turning down a $500 million Nvidia investment over concerns that a single shareholder could have such a big influence.</p><p>The high valuation also makes the prospective acquisition a costly one – at around 86x Hugging Face's annualized revenue ($150 million), Nvidia would be paying a premium for the platform's strategic position and existing relationships, against a backdrop of ongoing investments in models and development tools.</p><p>Regulator scrutiny might also question whether competing chipmakers and cloud service providers could be put at a disadvantage, particularly if Nvidia imposes hardware and software restrictions on the platform after a takeover.</p><p>Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face responded to requests for comment.</p><figure class="van-image-figure pull-right inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:676px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:31.51%;"><img id="diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78" name="tr-g_news" alt="Google logo on a black background next to text reading 'Click to follow TechRadar'" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg" mos="" align="right" fullscreen="" width="676" height="213" attribution="" endorsement="" class="pull-rightinline"></p></div></div></figure> </article> ]]>