Nvidia in Talks to Buy Hugging Face for $13B, Boosting Open AI Push

Nvidia is close to closing a $13 billion deal to buy Hugging Face, a platform often called the 'GitHub of AI.' It helps developers build, share, and run AI models. Earlier, Nvidia also made a $6 billion deal with Poolside, another open-model company, and bought OpenRouter from Stripe. These moves show Nvidia wants to rely less on big cloud providers and top AI labs, especially as OpenAI and Google are making their own chips. Buying Hugging Face would give Nvidia one of the biggest platforms for open models in the US, pushing more developers to use its chips and tech. Open models are still not mainstream, but their use is growing. About 6% of companies use them, and only 2% of software engineers do. These models work well for tasks like customer service chats, where companies can adjust them for their own needs and cut costs. As top AI labs keep raising prices, more firms may be forced to consider open models, which could speed up this trend.