Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, is buying the platform that hosts most of the world's open-source AI models, pushing further up the AI stack from hardware into software.

At $12.93 billion, this is Nvidia's second-largest deal on record, behind the $20 billion Groq asset purchase last December, and nearly double the $7 billion Mellanox acquisition in 2019.

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue approached Jensen Huang over the summer, and the deal came together within weeks.

The agreement splits roughly $11.9 billion for Hugging Face shareholders and up to $1 billion in equity retention for employees joining Nvidia.

Hugging Face last raised at a $4.5 billion valuation in 2023, when Nvidia participated in its $235 million Series D. This exit values the company at nearly 3x that mark.

The platform serves over 18 million developers and 200,000 companies, hosting more than 3 million models today, up from just 13,590 in 2021.

Nvidia has committed to keeping Hugging Face open, continuing to support other hardware vendors including AMD and Intel. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027.