Startup profile for Hugging Face: latest funding, latest known valuation, total disclosed funding, investors, status, sources, and why the company is interesting. Part of the Venture Capital Tracker startup directory.
Venture Capital Tracker logo
Venture Capital Tracker

Startup profile · funding coverage

Hugging Face funding, valuation and investors

Open-model hub Nvidia agreed to acquire for $12.93 billion on September 2, 2026 — not closed; expected H1 2027.

Keep track of Hugging Face

Save this profile to your VCT watchlist for a quick return.

View watchlist

Funding, valuation & investors

Answer-first snapshot

Latest funding

Not publicly disclosed

Latest known valuation

Not publicly disclosed

Total disclosed equity funding

Not publicly disclosed

Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.

Current status

private

Stage not recorded · New York, USA / Paris, France

Source links not recorded Last verified: 2026-09-04

Overview

Hugging Face is the open-source AI model hub founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf. It hosts models, datasets, and apps used to share and deploy open-weight AI. On September 2, 2026 Nvidia entered a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, Inc. Jensen Huang’s September 3 blog named a $12,930,300,000 purchase price and said Hugging Face will remain an open, multi-accelerator platform. BBC and the 8-K summary split the economics: about $11.9 billion payable to stockholders plus an equity retention program of up to about $1 billion for employees who join Nvidia. Close is expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. Status remains private until a close filing. Do not add the $11.9 billion and $1 billion lines into a $14 billion headline. CNBC: Delangue approached Huang over the summer. CNBC also reports a recent platform breach that Delangue attributed to engineering mistakes. Directory links: Groq (Nvidia’s larger ~$20B December 2025 talent/IP deal) and OpenRouter (Stripe’s announced, unpriced-by-the-companies August 2026 routing deal).

Why Hugging Face is interesting

Nvidia signed a definitive agreement on September 2, 2026, announced September 3. Jensen Huang named $12,930,300,000. The 8-K split is about $11.9 billion to stockholders plus up to $1 billion employee retention. Expected close first half of 2027. Not closed. Huang: 18 million builders, 3 million models, Nvidia compute will not be required.

Product & use cases

Hub for sharing, evaluating, fine-tuning, and deploying open-weight models, datasets, and AI applications, plus enterprise Hub and inference services.

  • Publishing and downloading open-weight models and datasets
  • Enterprise model hubs and evaluation
  • Inference endpoints that currently are not required to run on Nvidia silicon (buyer blog)

Key facts

  • Sep 2, 2026: Nvidia signed a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face (8-K). Announced Sep 3.
  • Huang: $12,930,300,000. 8-K/BBC: ~$11.9B to stockholders + up to $1B retention. Not a $14B headline.
  • Expected close H1 2027. Not closed. Status stays private.
  • Huang: 18M builders; 3M models; 500k datasets; 1M apps; 200k companies; Nvidia compute not required.
  • CNBC: second-biggest Nvidia purchase after ~$20B Groq assets/talent (Dec 2025).

Funding history (newest first)

Acquisition (agreed, not closed)

2026-09 $12.93B (Huang); ~$11.9B to stockholders + up to $1B retention (8-K/BBC)
  • NVIDIA

Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-to-acquire-hugging-face/

Competitive landscape

Edge: The default distribution layer for open models — the diligence question after this announcement is whether multi-accelerator neutrality survives a GPU-vendor owner, not whether the Hub has users.

Hugging Face is a signed, priced, not-yet-closed sale of the open-model hub to Nvidia. Diligence is close vs announce, $11.9B vs $12.93B vs retention, and whether ‘remain open’ is a blog sentence or a binding operating constraint.

  • OpenRouter adjacent

    Inference routing marketplace Stripe announced it is buying in August 2026. $7.5B is NYT/TechCrunch, not company. Not closed. See /startup/openrouter.

  • Groq adjacent

    Nvidia’s larger December 2025 ~$20B talent/IP transaction. Remaining Groq entity raised $350M at $3.5B in August 2026. See /startup/groq.

Notable stories

  • Keep status private until Nvidia or Hugging Face publish a close. ‘Agreed to acquire’ and an H1 2027 close window are not a close certificate.
  • Do not add the $11.9B equity line and the $1B retention line into a $14B purchase price.

Industries

AI & Machine Learning Developer Tools

Related funding articles

Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover Hugging Face's financing or category context.

FAQs about Hugging Face

Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.

Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face. Signed September 2, 2026. Announced September 3. Expected close first half of 2027. Not closed.
Huang named $12,930,300,000. The 8-K split is about $11.9 billion to stockholders plus up to $1 billion retention. See /2026-nvidia-hugging-face-12-9b-acquisition.
No. Private as of September 4, 2026. Treat it as announced-to-be-acquired, not as a closed acquisition, until a close filing.
Huang wrote that Nvidia compute will not be required and that the Hub will stay multi-cloud and multi-accelerator. That is a buyer blog statement before close.
Website All startups Funding news

By Venture Capital Tracker

Last updated:

Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.