Nvidia reportedly agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9B

Hugging Face is where much of the AI world downloads its models and datasets, free. Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy it for $12.9 billion. The Information reported the deal Wednesday, citing a person familiar with it. If it closes, one company would own the chips that run AI. It would also own the open library many companies build on. Nvidia and Hugging Face haven't confirmed it.

Nvidia already sells the GPUs nearly every AI lab depends on. Owning Hugging Face would put it inside the software layer too. It would help decide how the most popular open models get hosted and shared. That's a lot of the AI pipeline sitting under one roof. The reported price jumped fast, too. Weeks earlier, talks were pegged closer to $7 billion, before climbing to the reported $12.9 billion.

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Will regulators let it happen? A deal like this hands one company the chips and a key piece of AI software. That combination draws a hard look. Also watch Hugging Face's own community. Those open-source developers built its reputation, and they may push back on Nvidia owning it.