Nvidia sees a reported Hugging Face acquisition as a way to keep AI development broad and chip-hungry; Hugging Face’s value, however, rests on developers believing its open ecosystem is not controlled by any one vendor.

The latest report, first flagged in coverage by CNBC, says Nvidia is looking at another possible acquisition.¹ Business Insider reported Wednesday that the chipmaker is in talks to buy Hugging Face for roughly $13 billion—a deal that would put a major hub for open-source models closer to the company supplying much of the industry’s computing muscle.²

The strategic logic is straightforward. Nvidia has championed open models while OpenAI and Anthropic build largely closed, proprietary systems. Brad Gastwirth of Circular Technology argued that “Open source is an important counterweight to closed platforms like OpenAI and Anthropic,” because a fragmented ecosystem gives Nvidia more chances to remain the infrastructure provider.² Owning Hugging Face could also give Nvidia added sway over the hardware and software choices made by developers deploying models from the platform.

But the reported talks revive a tension that Hugging Face previously tried to avoid. Nvidia joined the startup’s $235 million funding round in 2023, while its Nemotron models are distributed on Hugging Face. A proposed $500 million Nvidia investment last year was reportedly rejected because the company did not want a single investor to carry too much influence. Hugging Face’s catalogue works across competing chips and clouds, including AMD and Google—a neutrality that could be harder to defend under Nvidia ownership.

“The biggest risk is neutrality,” Gastwirth said. “Hugging Face has a lot of value because developers see it as an open platform.”² Neither company immediately commented to Business Insider.

For some in the open-source community, the appeal of Hugging Face’s ecosystem remains undimmed: co-founder Clément Delangue amplified a post declaring, “The future is gonna be amazing. The open source @huggingface Micro Duck is the way.”clem 🤗 (ClementDelangue)³ The proposed deal would test whether that optimism can coexist with Nvidia’s growing control of the AI stack.