Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for $12.9B, its second-biggest deal ever
What's the deal? Nvidia has agreed to acquire open-source artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, the chipmaker announced Thursday. The move pushes Nvidia beyond hardware and further up the AI stack.
Why now? The deal follows a hacking incident that put Hugging Face at the center of concerns over AI and cybersecurity tools. Chief executive officer Clément Delangue blamed engineering mistakes for the attack, which his company resolved using an Nvidia version of a Chinese open model.
What's the endgame? Nvidia said Hugging Face will "remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem." Chief executive officer Jensen Huang added that the companies will "scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide."
By the numbers: The acquisition is Nvidia's second-biggest on record. It trails only the $20 billion purchase of assets from chipmaker Groq in December, and tops the almost $7 billion buy of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox in 2019.
The signal: Nvidia became the world's most valuable company on demand for its graphics processing units, which power the generative AI boom. Buying a popular developer platform shows it is betting on being more than a chip company.
Read more: Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal
