Washington (United States) (AFP) - Nvidia announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement to acquire the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, as the giant chip manufacturer seeks to diversify its presence in the artificial intelligence sector.

Published on: 09/03/2026 - 16:17

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed in a statement the deal, which was first revealed by American media last month.

“It took $12.9 billion to complete the deal, and it is worth every cent,” Huang told CNBC on Thursday.

Hugging Face, whose name was inspired by an emoji, was founded in New York in 2016 by three French entrepreneurs. The company describes itself as “an artificial intelligence community that builds the future.”

The company works on open models that can be downloaded and modified, as opposed to closed models like those offered by its competitors, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Huang emphasized that NVIDIA will not change the basic model of Hugging Face through the acquisition.

NVIDIA said in a statement that the artificial intelligence platform includes more than 18 million users, who have created more than three million models and more than one million applications.

Clem DeLange, co-founder of Hugging Face, explained that he, his two co-founders and the entire company team will continue to work and join NVIDIA as part of the acquisition agreement.

© 2026 AFP

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