Nvidia is reported to have agreed to acquire open-source artificial intelligence (AI) platform Hugging Face for about $12.9 billion, or about 17.81 trillion won.

On Aug. 27, Business Insider and other foreign media reported that Nvidia reached an agreement with Hugging Face on those terms. The two companies have not issued official statements.

If the deal is confirmed, it would be Nvidia's largest merger and acquisition in nearly eight years. Business Insider previously reported that the two sides had been in acquisition talks in recent weeks, valuing Hugging Face at more than $13 billion, or about 18 trillion won.

Nvidia has been increasing investments and deals, backed by large amounts of cash. It said second-quarter revenue rose 106 percent from a year earlier to $96.2 billion, or about 133 trillion won. Data centre revenue alone reached $89 billion, or about 123 trillion won. It also said it has equity investment commitments of about $18 billion, or about 25 trillion won, to be executed over the rest of the fiscal year, and that assets it already holds in private companies total $47.9 billion, or about 66.13 trillion won.

Hugging Face is seen as a key platform in the open-source AI ecosystem. According to its own open-source report released in spring 2026, it has 13 million users, and the number of registered public models exceeded 2 million as of 2025. Developers have used models on the platform regardless of which chips or software they use. If Nvidia secures the platform, it could broaden its touchpoints with developers and put itself in a favourable position to shift related workloads to its own chips.

The two companies have worked together before. Nvidia participated in a $235 million Hugging Face funding round in 2023. At the time, Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion, or about 6.21 trillion won, and Salesforce Ventures, Google, Amazon, AMD, Intel and IBM also joined as investors. Hugging Face later rejected a $500 million investment proposal from Nvidia late last year. That proposal valued Hugging Face at $7 billion, or about 9.7 trillion won, but Hugging Face said it did not want a dominant investor that could influence decision-making. The reported $12.9 billion is about 2.9 times its 2023 valuation and about 84 percent higher than the proposal price it rejected last year.

Microsoft also approached Hugging Face and is reported to have sounded out an acquisition proposal through banks, but talks are not believed to be continuing.

A key variable is Hugging Face's neutrality. Hugging Face has supported not only Nvidia but also rival hardware and models such as those from AMD and Intel, and that openness has been seen as the platform's core competitiveness. Even in its own report, Hugging Face named Nvidia as the biggest big tech partner in the open-source AI field, underscoring the close relationship. Concerns have emerged that this neutrality could be shaken if Nvidia directly owns the platform.

The deal also aligns with a broader industry push to secure infrastructure that supports AI applications. Stripe previously formalised its acquisition of OpenRouter, and The New York Times, citing sources, estimated the deal size at $7.5 billion, or about 10.4 trillion won.

Hugging Face also sits in that strategic infrastructure layer. If Nvidia ultimately takes control of Hugging Face, the debate is expected to shift from whether the platform can maintain independence to whether competitors and developers can continue to trust it as neutral infrastructure.