Reports on August 27, 2026 said NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the hub of the open-source AI world, for 12.9 billion USD (about 2.06 trillion yen). Neither company has confirmed it, but if the deal closes it would be the largest acquisition in NVIDIA's history. Here is what it would mean for a chipmaker to own the place where models are distributed.

What the reports say

The Information broke the story, citing a person with knowledge of the deal, and put the price at 12.9 billion USD. Talks reportedly started after another suitor approached Hugging Face.

Business Insider separately reported that NVIDIA had been in talks over an acquisition, and that Hugging Face had been working with a bank to gauge how serious potential bidders were. A source familiar with the matter told CNBC, on condition of anonymity, that an acquisition had been part of ongoing and recent discussions.

For now, neither NVIDIA nor Hugging Face has commented, and there has been no formal announcement. Whether a signed agreement actually exists remains unconfirmed at the reporting stage.

Owning the place where developers gather

Hugging Face is where developers share, test and jointly improve AI models, datasets and tools. It has become the de facto standard venue for distributing open-source models, so owning it would let NVIDIA reach from the silicon layer all the way up into software.

Siddy Jobe, a fund manager at Eonopolis Exponential Technologies funds, told CNBC the move makes sense. NVIDIA has been explicit that it does not want to discriminate between closed and open models, and Hugging Face fits a company that is built around community and platforms.

Jobe described NVIDIA's business as a five-layer cake in which foundation models are one layer. The company clearly wants to be integrated vertically across the whole stack, from energy through foundation models to applications. Read in that light, NVIDIA is no longer simply a company that sells GPUs.

The largest acquisition in company history

NVIDIA has struck a run of large deals over the past year, including a 20 billion USD (about 3.2 trillion yen) licensing agreement with AI chip startup Groq. At 12.9 billion USD, this deal would comfortably exceed the 6.9 billion USD (about 1.1 trillion yen) Mellanox acquisition completed in 2020 and become the company's biggest ever.

Strong results help. After earnings released on August 26, NVIDIA shares rose 4 percent in after-hours trading. A deep cash position is what makes this run of large transactions possible.

Exchange rate: 1 USD = 160 JPY (as of August 31, 2026)

A security incident just before the reports

Shortly before the acquisition reports, Hugging Face drew attention after a cyberattack, renewing questions about how quickly powerful AI and security tooling are evolving together.

Chief Executive Clément Delangue attributed the attack to engineering mistakes. A vocal advocate of open-source models, he also said his company used an NVIDIA version of a Chinese open model to resolve the incident.

Delangue told CNBC that AI cybersecurity will become a huge market in the United States and worldwide, and that open models will probably be kings in it. If the acquisition happens, NVIDIA and Hugging Face will sit even closer together in that field.

Summary

The report that NVIDIA has agreed to buy Hugging Face for 12.9 billion USD shows a chipmaker reaching for a key junction in how models are distributed. It would be the company's largest deal, and placed next to the Groq licensing agreement and the Mellanox acquisition it makes NVIDIA's push to own the entire stack look sharper still. Both companies remain silent, however, and it is not certain that terms are final. Whether a neutral public square for open source should sit under one chipmaker is a question worth holding until an official announcement lands.