Nvidia’s Hugging Face purchase confirmed at $13 billion

It's official: Nvidia has acquired the open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $13 billion.

Or, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the acquisition was for $12,930,300,000, to be exact.

In a post on Nvidia's website on Thursday, Huang confirmed that the chipmaker turned AI industry giant has officially purchased Hugging Face after reports said an acquisition was in the making last week.

Hugging Face launched in 2016 as a chatbot app for teens but quickly pivoted during the AI boom. It's now the largest repository of open source AI models and tools, serving as a GitHub-like platform for AI developers.

"Hugging Face will continue to support open source and open weight models from across the ecosystem, from every model builder," Huang said in his post, confirming the platform will remain open. "Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch. They enable organizations to match the right model to the right job. That is how AI can advance safely, strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty, accelerate innovation, and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and Main Street businesses around the world."

According to Huang, Hugging Face has more than 18 million users and that 200,000 companies utilize the platform. Last week, Hugging Face shared that the platform hosts more than 3 million models. It also has 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications on the platform.

Hugging Face was recently thrust into the spotlight earlier this summer after OpenAI shared a serious security incident where its AI agents went rogue and hacked the open-source platform.

Nvidia's purchase of the platform further cements the company's moves to seemingly become the global leader of the AI industry. The chipmaker has made numerous partnerships and investments in the AI industry in recent months, with Hugging Face being the latest.