Abstract:
According to people familiar with the matter, Nvidia has recently been negotiating with Hugging Face, an open source artificial intelligence platform, on acquisition matters. The potential deal could value Hugging Face at more than $13 billion and, if finalized, would be one of Nvidia's largest deals to date.
However, the two sides have not yet reached an agreement, and there is still a possibility that the negotiations will break down. It was previously reported that Hugging Face was in contact with multiple parties for acquisition intentions. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face responded to requests for comment.
As cash reserves continue to grow, NVIDIA has recently been significantly accelerating its external investment and transaction layout. The company said this week that it has committed $18 billion in equity investments during the remainder of the fiscal year; in addition, it currently holds $47.9 billion in private sector investments.
Reports indicate that Microsoft has also held talks with Hugging Face, but two people familiar with the matter said that the two parties have not continued to advance relevant discussions.
Nvidia and Hugging Face have a long history of cooperation. Nvidia participated in a $235 million round of financing completed by Hugging Face in 2023, when the latter was valued at $4.5 billion. The Financial Times previously reported that Hugging Face rejected a US$500 million investment plan proposed by Nvidia late last year, which valued the company at US$7 billion. Hugging Face was concerned at the time that the introduction of a single dominant investor might affect its independence in decision-making.
Hugging Face, founded in 2016, was founded by French entrepreneurs Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf. As an important platform in the open source AI ecosystem, Hugging Face hosts millions of AI models and data sets, on which developers can call, train and build applications.
If NVIDIA successfully acquires Hugging Face, it will be expected to further expand its influence among the developer community and may push more AI workloads to NVIDIA's chip platforms. But at the same time, the transaction may also bring challenges to the "neutrality" that Hugging Face has long emphasized. The platform currently supports models and hardware from the entire industry, including products from NVIDIA competitors AMD and Intel; once controlled by NVIDIA, its positioning as an open ecological infrastructure may be re-examined by the outside world.
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