Nvidia to buy Hugging Face for $12.9bn, report says

Nvidia is set to buy artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported Wednesday, citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the agreement.

The reported deal would mark a large increase from the $7 billion valuation used in initial negotiations with Nvidia late last year, according to the Financial Times. The Financial Times said Hugging Face at the time turned down a $500 million investment from the California-based chipmaker.

The two companies did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.

Hugging Face was founded in 2016 in New York by three French entrepreneurs. The company runs an online AI software library and promotes open models, which can be downloaded and modified, instead of closed models used by some rivals.

Nvidia is best known for graphics processing units, or GPUs, chips originally designed for gaming graphics that have become central to chatbots and other AI tools.