이미지: businessinsider.com · METAL LAB 편집
Summary
- NVIDIA is reportedly negotiating to acquire Hugging Face for more than $13 billion
- The Information reported a $12.9 billion deal has already been reached, but Business Insider says no contract has been signed yet
- Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion in 2023, and its recent annualized revenue has grown to about $150 million
- 최초 보도 밸류에이션
- 130억 달러 이상 (Business Insider, 8월 22일경)
- 디인포메이션 보도 인수가
- 129억 달러 (8월 26일 수요일 밤)
- 계약 상태 이견
- Information: 합의 도달 / Business Insider: 서명 전, 결렬 가능
- 마이크로소프트 접촉
- 허깅페이스와 미팅했으나 협상은 현재 진행 중 아님
- 2023년 투자 유치
- 2억3500만 달러, 밸류에이션 45억 달러 (세일즈포스벤처스 주도)
- 최근 연매출
- 약 1억5000만 달러 (두 달 전 약 1억 달러에서 증가)
- 엔비디아 이전 제안 거절
- 작년 말 5억 달러 투자 제안(밸류에이션 70억 달러) 거절
- 허깅페이스 창업
- 2016년, 클레망 들랑그·줄리앙 쇼몽·토마스 울프
NVIDIA is negotiating to acquire Hugging Face for more than $13 billion, but different outlets are telling different stories about whether the deal has actually closed. Business Insider first broke news of talks between the two companies over the weekend on August 23. Then, on the night of Wednesday the 26th, The Information pushed the story a step further, reporting that the two sides had "already agreed" on a price of $12.9 billion. That same night, Business Insider came back with a follow-up saying no contract had been signed yet and the deal could still fall apart. The two outlets' claims are in direct conflict. For background on how the acquisition talk first surfaced and how the founder has reacted, see Hugging Face reportedly in talks to be acquired for $13B — why the founder is hesitant.
What Hugging Face actually is
Hugging Face isn't a company that builds AI models — it's a marketplace where openly available models built by other companies gather and get distributed. Among developers, the quickest way to describe it is "GitHub for models." Open models like Meta's Muse, Alibaba's Qwen, and DeepSeek all live on the platform, but each is built by a different company. Hugging Face was founded in New York in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf. It started out as a teen chatbot app, and when the founders open-sourced the underlying technology, that became the basis for the company as it exists today.
The two outlets' conflicting versions of the deal
The Information reported that this deal marks major progress from the talks first reported a few days earlier. Business Insider, meanwhile, is sticking to its position that the negotiations it first reported over the weekend haven't reached the signing stage yet. According to two sources cited by Business Insider, Microsoft also held separate meetings with Hugging Face, but those conversations are not currently active.
| Outlet | Report date | What was reported | Deal status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Insider | First reported Aug 23 | Valuation above $13 billion | In negotiation, not yet signed |
| The Information | Wednesday night, Aug 26 | Acquisition price of $12.9 billion | Deal reached (unconfirmed by others) |
Why the valuation jumped
Revenue growth is behind Hugging Face's rising valuation. Its recent annualized revenue is reportedly around $150 million, up sharply from about $100 million just two months ago. In 2023, the company raised $235 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures at a $4.5 billion valuation — meaning the current negotiated price is nearly three times higher. Interestingly, NVIDIA had already offered to invest $500 million in Hugging Face late last year at a $7 billion valuation, and Hugging Face turned it down. The reported reason: the company didn't want a dominant investor influencing its decisions.
| Timing | Valuation/Revenue | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $4.5 billion | Raised $235 million |
| Late last year | $7 billion offer | NVIDIA offered $500M investment; Hugging Face declined |
| Recently | ~$150 million annualized revenue | Up from ~$100 million two months prior |
| Current talks | $13B+ to $12.9B | Reported differently by each outlet |
NVIDIA's bigger picture
NVIDIA makes the chips that power AI — it's not a direct competitor in the chatbot race but a supplier to players like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. Lately, the company has been aggressively deploying cash into equity stakes. It has earmarked $18 billion for equity investments for the rest of its fiscal year and has already put $47.9 billion into private companies. NVIDIA in talks to invest in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion fits the same pattern, showing NVIDIA's continued strategy of planting stakes across the AI ecosystem. Actually owning Hugging Face would give NVIDIA much deeper access to the developer ecosystem — and with it, more room to steer workloads toward NVIDIA chips.
Neutrality concerns
One of Hugging Face's current strengths is that it doesn't favor any particular hardware maker. The platform supports hardware and models from NVIDIA rivals like AMD and Intel as well. If NVIDIA becomes the owner, that neutrality could be at risk — which is exactly the concern being raised.
Editor's take
What's worth watching here isn't whether the deal happens, but the gap between the two reports. It's unusual for one outlet to say "deal reached" and another to say "not yet signed" on the very same night — a sign that the deal is likely moving faster behind the scenes than either newsroom's sourcing can keep up with. Less than a year after NVIDIA got turned down on a $7 billion investment offer, it's now reportedly close to buying the whole company outright at nearly double that valuation. That alone suggests how urgent it has become for NVIDIA to lock down access to open-source model distribution.
For companies here at home, the takeaway is straightforward. Plenty of local startups and research teams pull models from Hugging Face, and if NVIDIA becomes the owner, there's a real chance that deployment defaults could shift toward configurations optimized for a single hardware vendor. Nothing changes immediately, but teams running multi-vendor strategies should start thinking now about when to factor the deal's outcome into their contracts or migration plans.
In the coming weeks, expect either NVIDIA or Hugging Face to issue an official statement, or signs that regulators are taking an interest in the deal. With the two outlets' reporting this sharply divided, the story likely won't move into its next phase until the companies themselves confirm what's actually happening.
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