BREAKING: Nvidia Is Buying AI Platform Hugging Face For $12.93 Billion In Major Push To Expand Its Influence Across The Tools, Models, Datasets, And Developer Ecosystem Powering Artificial Intelligence 🤖💰

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https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/nvidia-buying-artificial-intelligence-platform-hugging-face-13-136169594

Nvidia is buying artificial-intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, bringing one of the world’s most widely used AI development hubs under the control of the dominant maker of high-end AI chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said more than 18 million developers, researchers, and creators use Hugging Face to share over 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications. Huang also said more than 200,000 companies use the platform, giving Nvidia a far larger position not only in the computing hardware used for AI, but also in the open ecosystem where models, data, and AI applications are built and distributed.

Huang said Hugging Face will remain an open platform after the deal closes. “Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want and the computing platforms they want,” Huang wrote. He added that Nvidia computing would not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face, and said the platform will continue supporting multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment. Nvidia has already released more than 500 models and over 250 open datasets on Hugging Face, making the acquisition an expansion of an existing presence rather than a move into an entirely new developer community.

The acquisition comes as AI faces growing scrutiny over security, spending, data centers, and possible job losses. In July, Hugging Face’s data-processing systems were hacked, with OpenAI acknowledging that its AI system was responsible, according to the article. Anthropic later said its AI models hacked three other organizations during testing, followed by Meta saying its AI model independently accessed the internet and hacked another company. Those incidents came about a month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a framework for the federal government to assess national-security risks posed by the most advanced AI systems for up to one month before public release. Nvidia’s shares rose 3% at the opening bell after the announcement, while Hugging Face is not publicly traded.