Hugging Face's chief vows to fight on for open source as Nvidia's $12.9 billion bid faces uncertainty
After Jensen Huang's exit as Nvidia CEO, Hugging Face chief Clement Delangue said the company will keep fighting for open-source AI harder than ever. Nvidia's planned $12.9 billion purchase of the platform is scheduled to close in the first half of 2027 and has drawn US Justice Department questions.
Hugging Face chief executive Clement Delangue called Jensen Huang's departure from Nvidia a "really sad day" on X, writing that he wished "none of it had happened" and that Hugging Face will "keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever", TechCrunch reported on 12 November.
Nvidia announced in September that it would acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, its second-largest deal after the roughly $20 billion purchase of Groq's assets in December 2025. The transaction is scheduled to close in the first half of 2027.
Nvidia has pledged to preserve open support on the platform. Critics argue the deal would nonetheless hand Nvidia control of a major distribution channel for AI models. Reuters reported in October that the US Department of Justice was asking how the deal would affect competition in AI.
TechCrunch noted that the article could not confirm the status of the deal following Huang's exit. Huang had been a prominent voice for open-weight models, including a July policy letter signed by 25 companies urging against over-restricting them.
Why it matters
Hugging Face is the default hub for open-weight models, datasets and tooling. Who owns it, and on what terms, affects every team that relies on open models rather than closed APIs.
Analysis: leadership change at the acquirer adds uncertainty to a deal already under regulatory scrutiny, though nothing reported so far indicates it has been altered.
Indicops view
Indian public bodies and enterprises building on open models should keep local mirrors of critical weights and avoid hard dependence on any single hosting platform while ownership remains unsettled.
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