Nvidia’s $13 billion Hugging Face bet reveals Jensen Huang’s vision for the next AI battleground

Nvidia is spending $12.93 billion to buy Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform that brings in about $150 million in annualized revenue. That’s a steep price on current sales — roughly 86 times, by Fortune’s math — and it says more about where Nvidia wants to stand than about what Hugging Face earns today.

Hugging Face has become one of the main gathering places for open AI work. Nvidia says more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use it, with over 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications on the platform. More than 200,000 companies use it, too. That reach is the asset here, not a tidy financial profile.

The timing matters. Open models have been pressing harder against closed systems from companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, and Nvidia is buying a front-row seat to that shift. Jensen Huang said Hugging Face will stay open to the wider AI industry, and he added that Nvidia compute won’t be required to build on or deploy through the platform. That is a useful promise if you’re trying to look like the neutral infrastructure provider while also making one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history.

It is Nvidia’s second-largest deal ever, behind its roughly $20 billion licensing and talent agreement for Groq’s assets in December. And it fits with the company’s broader habit of using its chip profits to place bets around the edges of AI, not just at the core. CFO Colette Kress said on Aug. 26 that Nvidia has put nearly $50 billion into AI labs developing advanced models, calling it “a meaningful commitment” but only “a small fraction” of expected free cash flow. The Hugging Face deal is set to close in the first half of 2027, according to an SEC filing.