Q&A with Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue on Nvidia acquiring Hugging Face, scaling the open model ecosystem, closed AI vs. open AI, and more

CNBC 2026-09-04

Context & Ripple Effects

Nvidia has framed its strategy as a hardware-and-software stack since its earlier full-stack AI strategy, and in 2024 Huang described the data center as an “AI factory.” The Hugging Face acquisition extends that stack toward the open-model ecosystem used by developers and startups.

The deal also arrives as Nvidia has emphasized its supply-chain position while acknowledging competition from ASICs such as Google’s TPU in a 2026 discussion of its competitive moat. Huang and Delangue present open and closed models as complementary; public reaction splits between seeing added resources for open AI and concern over Nvidia’s central position.

First-order effects

Nvidia gains ownership of Hugging Face, bringing a major open-model ecosystem into the same company that sells the compute infrastructure behind AI development and deployment.
Hugging Face’s developers, startups and institutions gain access to Nvidia’s resources, while their platform becomes part of Nvidia’s product and infrastructure strategy.

Second-order effects

ASIC vendors and other AI infrastructure rivals face greater pressure to offer developers an integrated path from models to deployment, rather than competing only on hardware performance.
Model builders using Hugging Face gain a more direct relationship with Nvidia’s stack, increasing Nvidia’s opportunity to shape the tooling and deployment choices around open models.

Third-order effects

The acquisition tests whether an open-model ecosystem can remain broadly trusted while owned by a dominant infrastructure supplier, making governance and platform neutrality more consequential competitive issues.
If Nvidia couples ecosystem ownership with its compute position, AI competition shifts further from individual chips or models toward control of the deployment layer that connects them.

The trend: AI infrastructure providers are moving to own more of the developer and deployment layers around open models, not just the compute that trains and runs them.

Discussion

@wildebees Wessel van Rensburg on bluesky
Huang's argument: open and closed models are both growing fast, so there's no contradiction in owning the infrastructure layer for both. That framing is convenient. Nvidia at the centre of open-source distribution is defensive against Platforms and OpenAI / Anthropic. [embedde…
@wildebees Wessel van Rensburg on bluesky
Delangue approached Nvidia — not the other way round. [embedded post]
@clementdelangue Clem on x
Super happy to share our intention to join forces with NVIDIA in a $12,930,300,000 acquisition 💛💚 10 years after starting Hugging Face, open-source AI is at an inflection point. Thanks to the community, we've shown that it can be a complement, and even an alternative, to closed-…
@davidsacks David Sacks on x
It's great to see Nvidia supporting open-source AI in a big way. Keeping innovation decentralized and accessible is the key to avoiding an unsafe and dystopian future where advanced AI capabilities are centralized and controlled by only a few hands.
@jensenhuang Jensen Huang on x
Exciting day for NVIDIA and @huggingface . Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. They allow every developer, startup, university, industry and country to build with, customize and benefit from AI. Thank yo…
@reach_vb @reach_vb on x
Match made in heaven: stoked for Hugging Face and Nvidia! 🔥 More so, happy for my team at Hugging Face - this is a brilliant outcome for all and most of all the acquisition gives the team resources to go after even more ambitious goals. Open weights are here to stay and I'm excit…
@zrdianjiao @zrdianjiao on x
Witnessing history — huge congrats to the whole HF team on 10 years of open-source AI! 🤗🟢
@miramurati Mira Murati on x
@JensenHuang @huggingface Congratulations, Jensen and Clem. A great home for Hugging Face to continue expanding access to open models and the tools that let people build with them.
@mmitchell_ai @mmitchell_ai on x
Quick ethics take: A big part of why I joined @huggingface 5 years ago was the commitment to *critical* AI values: Openness, transparency, shared access. And we scaled this across the globe. Today, we've agreed to join NVIDIA—grounded on those values. I'll share more later. =)
@tekbog @tekbog on x
it all started as a chat bot for teens but they ended up pivoting a lesson in here
@sriramk Sriram Krishnan on x
@ClementDelangue Congratulations. No one deserves this more than you and your team. You've accomplished great things for open source and I know this is just the beginning.
@amir Amir Efrati on x
official announcement from Nvidia is now up: https://blogs.nvidia.com/... Nvidia maintains that the platform will remain open and will not push models toward its architecture.
@jason @jason on x
Starting today, @nvidia is the number-one competitor to OpenAI and Anthropic for tokens and enterprise compute. @JensenHuang is now the leading open-source provider in America, and he'll soon win the world. Predict Jensen will catch up, then blow past Chinese models by the end of…
@clementdelangue Clem on x
@typesfast had to do it for the lolz https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
@nikitabier Nikita Bier on x
@ClementDelangue Well done Clement! I remember when we met in Brooklyn during the early days and I thought the app made no sense—not realizing that you were working on one of the most important problems of our generation.
@palantirtech @palantirtech on x
Long live the sovereignty revolution!
@satyanadella Satya Nadella on x
Looking forward to this ecosystem with open models continuing to flourish and grow with NVIDIA and Hugging Face, and the continued partnership. Congrats @JensenHuang and @ClementDelangue!
@alexocheema Alex Cheema on x
congrats @huggingface and @nvidia! sounds like a great outcome im super happy about these parts in particular: “keeping the platform open, independent and compute agnostic” and “empowering 100 million AI builders to own their intelligence rather than rent it”
@sundarpichai Sundar Pichai on x
Congrats @JensenHuang @ClementDelangue for this great outcome! We were investors in Huggingface and continue to be partners and this will strengthen the open model ecosystem!
@breeves08 Brandon Reeves on x
Congratulations to @ClementDelangue, @julien_c, @Thom_Wolf and the entire @huggingface team on today's news. Seven years ago we led the Series A of the team that helped make open models a movement. We could not be more proud of what they have accomplished and the community they h…
@romanchernin Roman Chernin on x
I think Nvidia acquiring HuggingFace is a good outcome for the industry and community! More open source! Congratulations to @Thom_Wolf @ClementDelangue @julien_c and entire @huggingface team
@ronconway Ron Conway on x
What an incredible outcome for @huggingface! Long before it was obvious, @ClementDelangue and his co-founders saw that AI should be more open and accessible. His passion for open source, remarkable ability to bring people together, and talent for assembling an extraordinary team …
@osanseviero Omar Sanseviero on x
Congrats Clem, Thom, Julien, Lysandre, and the entire Hugging Face team. Proud of all of you! The impact of HF in the AI ecosystem has been massive, and I'm so so excited to see them scale that impact with NVIDIA Congrats @JensenHuang, the goats of ML are joining your team :)
@nvidia @nvidia on x
Open models are essential to expanding access to AI and accelerating innovation around the world. We're excited to help @huggingface scale its platform and community while preserving the openness, neutrality, and choice that have made it a trusted home for AI builders. 🤗💚
@alighodsi Ali Ghodsi on x
This will be great for the industry and open source. Congrats @ClementDelangue and @JensenHuang!
@ollama @ollama on x
Congrats to the team! Bullish on open models and all the partners we make along the way! ❤️ Let's go
@aravsrinivas Aravind Srinivas on x
A repository of open models and tools to train and serve them in an accessible manner is absolutely necessary for AI to remain accessible and useful to the public. Glad that NVIDIA is coming forth to do that for the open source community by supporting HuggingFace.
@nikesharora Nikesh Arora on x
Congratulations Jensen. As I sit in my bi-weekly meeting debating small language models being trained being able to work on small end point footprints or talking about use cases where we will need AI on a consistent basis across lots of cyber data for customers and todays frontie…
@mervenoyann Merve on x
we can now scale microduck production for absolute world dominance 🥵 super happy to join @nvidia 💚 I joined HF by a gut feeling 5 yrs ago seeing how kind & talented people were, with the mission to make open-source win always found nvidia and HF to be match made for it 🤗
@adcock_brett Brett Adcock on x
This is good for everyone building and open source. Congrats @JensenHuang and @ClementDelangue
@thom_wolf Thomas Wolf on x
So happy to finally share the news in person It's been a wild ride for Hugging Face. We certainly did not anticipate, back in 2016, as a tiny team of scrappy underdogs, that the field would grow so much or that the impact we could have on it would become so massive. I remember @j…
@levie Aaron Levie on x
Another huge moment for open weights AI. The infra platforms are working. The models are getting better. The ecosystems are being deeply invested in. The business models are working.
@sriramk Sriram Krishnan on x
very good moment for American open source. Also big shout out to @ClementDelangue and team for persisting and building something over many trials and tribulations.
@danielnewmanuv Daniel Newman on x
$NVDA understands the need to democratize AI at scale. Bringing down the cost per correct response rapidly leveraging a diverse set of open weight models. The Hugging Face deal makes enormous sense & reflects a small price for NVIDIA to pay to deepen its access to HF community.💪🏻
@patrickmoorhead Patrick Moorhead on x
...Good opp for Nvidia to: - be the center of a developer experience and the start of their day - side load inference compute capabilities for developers to run their apps on - provide a future alternative for GitHub users Clem says they will maintain their independence. Looking…
@george_kurtz George Kurtz on x
Great news for the industry. Open models put frontier AI in the hands of every builder and every defender. Congrats @nvidia, @huggingface, and @JensenHuang
@aleabitoreddit Serenity on x
$NVDA acquires hugging face for $12,930,300,000. Jensen stated the reason being: - 18M+ devs use Hugging Face - 3M+ models, 500k+ datasets, 1M+ apps - 200k+ companies use the platformm - support of open weight models this almost reminds me of $MSFT buying Github?
@emostaque Emad on x
Without Hugging Face the launch and scaling of stable diffusion & the models that followed would only have been a fraction of what they were. Great and super engaged team who have constantly flown the flag for open source 🤗
@julien_c Julien Chaumond on x
Super happy to officially announce that we are a̶c̶q̶u̶i̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ joining forces with @nvidia 🔥 Here is a more personal take: AI is at an inflection point. Open source AI can become less relevant in the coming years if the big closed labs run away with it, OR it can become the fo…
@chamath Chamath Palihapitiya on x
This will turn out to be a very consequential and important acquisition in AI It is increasingly clear that the future of AI will be ultra capable and ultra cheap sources of intelligence tokens. Huggingface can help Nvidia accelerate this inevitability for the industry. This also…
@tomwarren Tom Warren on x
Nvidia is acquiring Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The GitHub-like open-source AI repository was last valued at $4.5 billion in 2023 https://www.theverge.com/...
@michaeldell Michael Dell on x
Open models are for everyone and how AI reaches everyone. 18M developers. 3M models. 200K companies building on @huggingface . @Dell has been partnered with Hugging Face for years. Now with @nvidia 's backing and committing to keep it open on any silicon and anywhere, is a b…
@laurengoode Lauren Goode on x
Just now, on a joint call with Nvidia and Hugging Face, @ClementDelangue says that the acquisition helps HF “support the open source AI community but at the next level, at a much bigger scale, which we feel is needed for the field and for the world.” HF has 18 million
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
@JensenHuang @huggingface Congrats!
@katie_roof Katie Roof on x
Omg what! The Hugging Face deal price was the code for the hugging 🤗 emoji. Did someone leave money on the table to make $12.9303 happen?? https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
@amitisinvesting Amit on x
NVIDIA AQCURIES HUGGING FACE FOR $12.9B. Jensen on the value of open source models:
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
NVIDIA buying Hugging Face could be one of the best possible outcomes for open-source AI. Not because NVIDIA is a charity, but because its incentives are unusually well aligned with an open ecosystem. NVIDIA does not need one model to win. It wins when millions of developers trai…
@percyliang Percy Liang on x
Open models gaining momentum. This is incentive-aligned and just makes sense.
@scottwu46 Scott Wu on x
Congrats to @ClementDelangue and the whole HF team! Really important work for the industry.
@shaunmmaguire Shaun Maguire on x
Between Cursor, Open Router and Hugging Face There have been massive recent wins for @a16z, @ThriveCapital, @Lux_Capital etc @foundersfund + @valor had a generational win with SpaceX and Anduril is on the horizon @benchmark with Cerebras and Cursor @sparkcapital with their early …
@travisk Travis Kalanick on x
Big shoutout to @JensenHuang on this move... liberty depends on all of us having choice in how we use AI .... That means each of us having control of our privacy and intelligence while keeping strongest AI companies honest
@ifm_ai @ifm_ai on x
@nvidia 's $12.9B @huggingface deal is more validation of the critical importance of open source at the frontier. But open weights ≠ open understanding — real openness means the data, code & methodology too, so claims can be verified, not just trusted. Today we're showing that at…
@tszzl Roon on x
efficient markets in shambles
@ccatalini Christian Catalini on x
The AI landscape is rapidly reorganizing around open source and those who control strategic complementary assets. The future is bright for diverse, distributed forms of intelligence to coexist and thrive. https://x.com/...
@velvetatom Tess van Stekelenburg on x
A massive inflection point for open-models and the beginning of a new chapter in opening up more options for sovereignty, safety and economic possibility. Congrats on the entire HF team @ClementDelangue @julien_c & @JensenHuang - humbled for Lux to have been a small part of the
@clementdelangue Clem on x
@Katie_Roof haha I was surprised people didn't notice earlier. Shows that price was never really the most important thing for both sides. Also glad I can start interacting again publicly haha (sorry for ignoring for obvious reasons)
@nvidianewsroom @nvidianewsroom on x
NEWS: NVIDIA has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire @huggingface, bringing together two companies with a shared commitment to advancing truly open-source AI. NVIDIA plans to help scale Hugging Face's platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for …
@alexrkonrad Alex Konrad on x
I don't want to hear from the VCs who invested in HuggingFace again today. I only want to hear from the investors who passed on it, ideally multiple times, because it “had no clear path to revenue”
@eliebakouch Elie on x
huge congrats to the hugging face team 🫶 this team is full of awesome people who really care about open source and the mission and are just lovely people to work with
@obrien Chris O'Brien on x
Interesting insight here: Maybe the @huggingface - @nvidia deal is more about Microducks than it seems?
@shakeelhashim Shakeel on x
Hugging Face confirms its acquisition by Nvidia. Which means Nvidia is now in the business of moderating deepfake porn 🙃
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
@JensenHuang tells @CNBC that there were other bidders for Hugging Face
Andrew C. Madigan Andrew C. Madigan on linkedin
Everyone is about to ask whether Hugging Face stays neutral under NVIDIA. — I think there's a better question: how did a chip company become America's loudest advocate for open models? …
Michael Intrator Michael Intrator on linkedin
A nearly $13 billion deal is not a side bet. It's a statement about where the market is going. — That's why NVIDIA's agreement …
Alex LeBrun Alex LeBrun on linkedin
Hello Julien Chaumond, — Following up on your email from July 31, 2015 — sorry for my slow reply. After much consideration, I would like to invest in Hugging Face's pre-pre-seed round. …
Tyler Nelson Tyler Nelson on linkedin
Not cheap but smart and absolutely the right move for Nvidia.. OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Anthropic — all (trying) building their own chips right now …
Clem Delangue Clem Delangue on linkedin
Super happy to share our intention to join forces with NVIDIA in a $12,930,300,000 acquisition 💛💚 …
Mark Heaps Mark Heaps on linkedin
It's a very exciting day for us in Developer Community here at NVIDIA. This is an amazing relationship that will drive more opportunities for our community members. …
Irene Solaiman Irene Solaiman on linkedin
Open source AI just got a lot bigger! — Hugging Face is staying open and compute agnostic, now with the support of the biggest open source champion and contributor NVIDIA …
Julien Chaumond Julien Chaumond on linkedin
Super happy to officially announce that we are a̶c̶q̶u̶i̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ joining forces with NVIDIA 🔥 …
@tomaarsen.com Tom Aarsen on bluesky
🤗💚I'm very excited to continue our open source and open weight journey together with NVIDIA! — See the announcement here: blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia- ...
@robcyran Rob Cyran on bluesky
Not seeing the logic here, but $12.9bn is 0.02% of Nvidia market cap so it's like buying a weird soda you see at the supermarket out of curiousity — blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia- ...
r/technology r on reddit
Nvidia confirms it will buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion
r/LocalLLM r on reddit
It's official! Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face for 12.9 billion dollars.
r/artificial r on reddit
Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B - End of neutral AI?
r/nvidia r on reddit
[Official] NVIDIA to Acquire Hugging Face
r/LocalLLaMA r on reddit
It's official! Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face for 12.9 billion dollars.
r/technology r on reddit
Nvidia Agrees to Buy Hugging Face for $13 Billion
@rachelcoldicutt Rachel Coldicutt on bluesky
Hmmm. I have been under a rock so missed this, but — Nvidia buying Hugging Face does *not* seem like great news blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia- ...
@finkd Mark Zuckerberg on x
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta's Watermelon model and Muse Spark open weights are “coming soon”

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