NEW YORK (AP) — Nvidia has agreed to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter, just hours before Hugging Face unveiled a $399 waddling robot duck.
Neither company confirmed the deal Thursday. Talks valuing Hugging Face above $13 billion had not produced a signed agreement and could still collapse.
If it goes through, the deal would be among Nvidia’s largest purchases and a steep jump from Hugging Face’s $4.5 billion valuation in a 2023 funding round that included Nvidia. The platform later rejected a $500 million Nvidia investment that would have valued it at $7 billion, saying it did not want a dominant investor. The Information put Hugging Face’s annualized revenue near $150 million.
On Thursday, Hugging Face and its Pollen Robotics team announced Microduck, a 10-inch biped that walks, grasps objects with a beak, rights itself after falling and can roller-skate. Preorders opened at $399, with first shipments targeted before Christmas. CEO Clement Delangue called it an affordable robot people can retrain with reinforcement learning.
Buying Hugging Face would give the chipmaker control of a leading hub for open models and datasets as rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic pursue their own chips. Analysts say the platform sits at the junction where developers choose which models and which hardware to use.
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The deal, if completed, would still require regulatory review.