Nvidia’s nearly $13 billion purchase of Hugging Face, announced in September, was pitched as a way to widen the reach of artificial intelligence. Chief executive Jensen Huang said the acquisition would help “expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.”¹

That promise rested on Hugging Face’s unusually broad footprint. The platform, built around sharing and testing AI models, had more than 18 million users, 200,000 companies, 3 million models and 500,000 datasets at the time of the announcement, Nvidia said. It also sells infrastructure and collaboration tools to organisations working on proprietary AI — including chip companies.¹

Now the deal faces a new and pointed question from Washington. The US Justice Department has made inquiries into whether the acquisition could affect competition in the AI industry, Reuters reported; CNBC subsequently confirmed the scrutiny with a person familiar with the matter.²

The review lands amid wider concern about Nvidia’s expanding influence over the AI stack. The company is reportedly already facing a DOJ investigation over its dominance in AI chips, while its $20 billion purchase of Groq assets late last year has also drawn scrutiny.¹

For regulators, the issue is not simply the size of another Nvidia deal. Hugging Face is a major meeting point for open-source models, datasets and the companies building AI products. Folding that hub into the industry’s dominant chip supplier could reshape the competitive terrain for developers and rivals alike. Nvidia declined to comment on the DOJ inquiry.²