NVIDIA’s $12.93 Billion Deal for Hugging Face Is a Bet on the Future of Open Models

NVIDIA’s agreement to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion would bring one of AI’s central platforms for discovering, sharing, evaluating and deploying models into the chipmaker’s orbit. Hugging Face has become a meeting ground for researchers, startups, enterprises and developers working across the open-model ecosystem. NVIDIA is not simply buying another AI software company. It is seeking a closer relationship with the people and institutions that decide which models to use, how to adapt them and where to run them. NVIDIA says Hugging Face will remain open to the models, frameworks, cloud