Nvidia has acquired Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform often called the GitHub of AI, for approximately $13 billion. The deal, which still requires regulatory approval, aims to strengthen Nvidia's position in the open AI ecosystem. Justin Boitano, Nvidia's vice president of enterprise AI, stated that Hugging Face will remain an open platform, allowing its 18 million developers to choose models, cloud providers, and chips freely.

The platform hosts 3 million open AI models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications, serving over 200,000 companies. Nvidia plans to maintain the Hugging Face brand and operations. This acquisition follows Nvidia's recent investments in open model groups like Reflection AI and neoclouds such as Core Weave and Nebius.

Founder Jensen Huang has advocated for open models, signing a letter urging the US to support open ecosystems. The deal comes amid political tensions regarding Chinese open AI systems. Hugging Face, based in New York, previously accepted venture capital from Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and Intel.

The company monetizes through premium subscriptions for corporate users. Nvidia turned down a $500 million investment late last year to avoid a single dominant investor, the Financial Times reported.