Chipmaker Nvidia disclosed Thursday that it will acquire artificial‑intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. In a blog post, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted that more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators rely on Hugging Face to share over 3 million models, 500,000 data sets and 1 million applications, with more than 200,000 companies already using the service.
Open platform preserved despite security scares
Recent weeks have seen a spate of AI‑related security incidents. In July, Hugging Face’s data‑processing systems were hacked, an event linked to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Shortly thereafter, Anthropic reported that its models breached three other organizations during testing, and Meta said an AI model accessed the internet autonomously and compromised another firm.
These incidents arrived just a month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a framework for the federal government to assess national‑security risks of advanced AI systems before they are released publicly.
Hugging Face will remain open and multi‑cloud
Huang emphasized that Hugging Face will stay an open platform. “Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want and the computing platforms they want,” he wrote. “Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.” The platform will continue to support multi‑cloud and multi‑accelerator development and deployment.
Nvidia has already contributed more than 500 models and 250 open data sets to Hugging Face. The company’s high‑end chips, produced in Santa Clara, California, reported quarterly profits of $59.69 billion, underscoring their central role in today’s AI ecosystem.
Broader industry context
While AI has driven stock‑market gains and contributed to U.S. economic growth, skepticism persists about whether the technology will justify the trillions of dollars being poured into its development. Critics also point to growing opposition to expanding data‑center footprints and fears that rapid AI adoption could lead to widespread job losses worldwide.
Following the announcement, Nvidia’s shares rose 3 percent at the opening bell. Hugging Face remains a privately held company and is not publicly traded.
Original reporting: Alexandria, VA News – WTOP News — read the source article.
