Nvidia’s Hugging Face Embrace Burnishes AI Kingmaker Status

Nvidia’s AI chip design rival, Broadcom, may be forecasting rocketing growth. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang needn’t worry. He’s deftly parlayed Nvidia’s early AI winnings into what’s likely to be an enduring role as kingmaker in the sector, as he demonstrated by confirming the $12.9 billion purchase of Hugging Face on Thursday, a week after we first reported it.

Hugging Face is a popular archive of open-source AI models—yes, the name is a distraction—used by developers to make applications and tailor them to specific AI chips. The purchase could theoretically give Nvidia the power to influence the chips those developers use, although Huang insisted in a blog post on Thursday the company won’t do that.