The US Department of Justice is investigating Nvidia’s acquisition of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face. The deal, which was announced on September 3, 2026, is valued at $12.93 billion.
The financial structure of the acquisition includes $11.9 billion for Hugging Face shareholders and up to $1 billion allocated for employee equity retention. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
Regulators are examining the deal to determine its impact on competition within the artificial intelligence sector. This review is part of a broader investigation into Nvidia’s business practices, which already includes scrutiny of the company's licensing agreement with the AI startup Groq.
Hugging Face, founded in 2016, currently hosts 3 million open-source AI models and 500,000 datasets. The platform serves a user base of more than 18 million developers and 200,000 companies.
Nvidia stated that it intends to maintain the open and multi-cloud nature of Hugging Face. The company claims the acquisition will broaden access to open-weight AI models and accelerate their development.
