Why Nvidia wants Hugging Face — and a bigger say in the future of AI

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images Nvidia's interest in Hugging Face supercharges its push into open-source AI.

Open models could keep OpenAI and Anthropic from gaining too much power and squeezing Nvidia out.

While Nvidia could gain more control over Hugging Face, too much could backfire.

What does $13 billion buy Nvidia these days? A bigger say in what AI gets built and what it runs on.

Business Insider reported on Wednesday that the chip giant was in talks to acquire Hugging Face , which hosts open-source AI models.

That lines up with Nvidia's strategy as of late, as it has been beating the drum about open-source AI — models that anyone can use and build on.

Open models could stave off a future dominated by giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which create closed, proprietary models.

If top AI labs dominate the models being used and build their own chips to run them — as OpenAI is doing with Jalapeño — they could eventually cut Nvidia out.

"Open source is an important counterweight to closed platforms like OpenAI and Anthropic," said Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology.

"The more AI development stays open and fragmented across many models and developers, the more opportunity Nvidia has to remain the underlying infrastructure provider." There's a more immediate payoff, too: selling more chips.

Developers using models from Hugging Face have to decide which hardware and software to run them on, and owning the hub could give Nvidia more sway over their choices.

Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face immediately responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Nvidia could get more control over open-source AI Nvidia has been circling Hugging Face for years.