Nvidia’s Hugging Face Acquisition Is a $12.9 Billion Bet on Open-Source AI
Nvidia’s Hugging Face Acquisition Is a $12.9 Billion Bet on Open-Source AI
英伟达以 129 亿美元收购 Hugging Face，押注开源人工智能
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, which makes online developer tools and maintains a massive library of open-source data sets, for nearly $13 billion. While the deal had been rumored for weeks, the companies made it official Thursday morning. 英伟达已同意以近 130 亿美元的价格收购 Hugging Face。Hugging Face 是一家提供在线开发者工具并维护着庞大开源数据集库的公司。尽管该交易已传闻数周，但两家公司于周四上午正式宣布了这一消息。
The deal signals Nvidia’s seriousness about being steeped in the software side of generative AI development as well as in infrastructure. Nvidia already offers customers a suite of free, customizable open-weights AI models, known as Nemotron. As part of its announcement, Nvidia committed to maintaining Hugging Face’s current open standards, suggesting that the chipmaker is positioning itself as an even greater resource for developers looking to access cutting-edge, nonproprietary tools. 这笔交易表明，英伟达不仅在基础设施领域，在生成式人工智能开发的软件层面也展现了深耕的决心。英伟达此前已为客户提供了一套名为 Nemotron 的免费、可定制的开放权重 AI 模型。作为公告的一部分，英伟达承诺将维持 Hugging Face 现有的开放标准，这表明这家芯片制造商正将自己定位为开发者获取尖端非专有工具的重要资源。
The move also underscores Nvidia’s position that open-weights models are better for the tech industry than closed, proprietary AI models like those developed by OpenAI and Anthropic. Earlier this month, Nvidia rallied more than 80 companies to sign an open letter asking the US government to defend open-weight AI models. Nvidia also launched an initiative called SAFE, or Shared AI Findings Exchange, that encouraged tech companies to “confidentially collect and analyze AI incidents and near misses, identify recurring control failures and publish evidence-based operating recommendations that reduce systemic risk.” 此举也强调了英伟达的立场：对于科技行业而言，开放权重模型优于 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等公司开发的封闭式专有 AI 模型。本月初，英伟达联合 80 多家公司签署了一封公开信，呼吁美国政府捍卫开放权重 AI 模型。英伟达还发起了一项名为 SAFE（共享 AI 发现交流）的倡议，鼓励科技公司“秘密收集并分析 AI 事件及险情，识别反复出现的控制故障，并发布基于证据的运营建议，以降低系统性风险。”
“Open models let startups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in the press release announcing the deal. “AI advances faster when people can build together.” “开放模型让初创公司、企业、大学和公共机构能够在先进能力的基础上进行构建，而无需从零开始训练每一个模型，”英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋在宣布该交易的新闻稿中表示，“当人们能够共同构建时，人工智能的进步会更快。”
Nvidia’s embrace of open-source software and open-weights AI might seem like an abrupt turn, especially given that CUDA, the software layer for its highly coveted GPUs, is itself proprietary. But as frontier AI labs and some of the large hyperscalers, including Amazon and Meta, seek to build their own custom chips, Nvidia has begun to position itself as a maker of not just GPUs but also high-performance CPUs, and has widened its software offerings in order to keep developers building on Nvidia’s platforms. 英伟达对开源软件和开放权重 AI 的拥抱似乎是一个突然的转变，尤其是考虑到其备受追捧的 GPU 所依赖的软件层 CUDA 本身就是专有的。但随着前沿 AI 实验室以及包括亚马逊和 Meta 在内的一些大型超大规模云服务商寻求构建自己的定制芯片，英伟达已开始将自己定位为不仅是 GPU，也是高性能 CPU 的制造商，并扩大了其软件产品范围，以确保开发者继续在英伟达的平台上进行构建。
Business Insider previously reported that the two companies were in talks, and The Information later reported that a deal had been reached. 《商业内幕》（Business Insider）此前曾报道两家公司正在进行谈判，随后《The Information》报道称交易已经达成。
Hugging Face was founded a decade ago by three French entrepreneurs in New York City, who wanted to launch an AI “companion” app. That didn’t catch on, but the team’s efforts to build their own natural language processing (NLP) tools inspired their next move: making complex tech tools more accessible to developers. Hugging Face eventually became a platform for developers to freely share source code, data sets, and, in the generative AI era, large language models. Hugging Face 由三位法国企业家于十年前在纽约创立，最初他们希望推出一款 AI“伴侣”应用。该应用并未流行起来，但团队在构建自有自然语言处理（NLP）工具方面的努力启发了他们的下一步行动：让复杂的科技工具对开发者更加友好。最终，Hugging Face 成为了开发者自由分享源代码、数据集，以及在生成式 AI 时代分享大语言模型的平台。
“Open-source AI is at an inflection point,” wrote Hugging Face cofounder and CEO Clément Delangue in a post on X announcing the acquisition. “Thanks to the community, we’ve shown that it can be a complement, and even an alternative, to closed-source APIs. But for it to happen at larger scale, it needs more compute, more support, more collaboration and more visibility.” “开源人工智能正处于一个转折点，”Hugging Face 联合创始人兼首席执行官 Clément Delangue 在 X 上宣布收购的帖子中写道，“感谢社区，我们已经证明它不仅可以作为闭源 API 的补充，甚至可以成为替代品。但要实现更大规模的发展，它需要更多的算力、更多的支持、更多的协作以及更高的知名度。”
According to PitchBook data, Hugging Face had raised nearly $400 million in venture capital funding as of December 2025. Some of its backers include Betaworks, Lux Capital, Sequoia Ventures, Coatue, and Addition. Notable individual investors include Greg Brockman, Richard Socher, and the NBA player Kevin Durant. 根据 PitchBook 的数据，截至 2025 年 12 月，Hugging Face 已筹集了近 4 亿美元的风险投资。其支持者包括 Betaworks、Lux Capital、红杉资本（Sequoia Ventures）、Coatue 和 Addition。知名的个人投资者包括 Greg Brockman、Richard Socher 以及 NBA 球星凯文·杜兰特（Kevin Durant）。
Hugging Face has more recently been front and center after its platform was hacked by AI agents from OpenAI. The incident sparked a broader conversation across the tech industry about the safety, security, and manageability of the autonomous agents being touted by top AI companies. 最近，Hugging Face 的平台遭到来自 OpenAI 的 AI 智能体攻击，使其处于舆论中心。这一事件在整个科技行业引发了关于顶级 AI 公司所推崇的自主智能体的安全性、保障性及可管理性的广泛讨论。
In a 2023 interview with CNBC Delangue predicted that the number of developers working with AI models would soar, and estimated that within five years, “you’re going to have like 100 million AI builders. And if all of them use Hugging Face all day, every day, we’ll obviously be in a good position.” 在 2023 年接受 CNBC 采访时，Delangue 曾预测使用 AI 模型的开发者数量将激增，并估计在五年内，“你将拥有大约 1 亿名 AI 构建者。如果他们所有人每天都在使用 Hugging Face，我们显然会处于一个有利的地位。”
Obviously, Nvidia seems to agree. 显然，英伟达对此表示赞同。