DOJ questions Nvidia's $12.93B Hugging Face deal

The US Department of Justice has asked how Nvidia's $12.93 billion purchase of the open-source platform Hugging Face would affect competition in artificial intelligence, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Reuters reported on October 28, 2026 that the department's recent questions cover Nvidia's acquisitions, investments and sales practices, and whether the chip designer has pressured its customers. The inquiries are not a lawsuit or a finding that the deal violates antitrust law. Reuters noted that government investigations are not evidence of wrongdoing and do not necessarily lead to lawsuits.

On Hugging Face itself, Justice Department officials have asked whether the deal would let Nvidia capture what Reuters described as a fundamental distribution point for AI. The two people said officials want to know how Nvidia might use the platform to harm rivals in the AI market and whether it could gain leverage from the acquisition. The department is also asking questions about Hugging Face's competitors.

Hugging Face runs a platform and community for developing, sharing and deploying open-source models, datasets and applications, according to Nvidia's Form 8-K, filed with the SEC on September 3, 2026. Nvidia signed the definitive agreement on September 2 and announced it a day later. The filing states that Nvidia expects the transaction to close in the first half of 2027, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including receipt of required regulatory approvals.

Nvidia's announcement put the transaction value at $12,930,300,000. The 8-K gives the breakdown: about $11.9 billion payable to Hugging Face stockholders, subject to certain adjustments, plus an equity-based retention program of up to about $1 billion for Hugging Face employees joining Nvidia.

In the filing, Nvidia committed to keep Hugging Face's platform open, consistent with Hugging Face's existing practices. Under that commitment, model makers, developers and users would continue to upload and download models and datasets of their choosing, and the platform would support other silicon vendors. Nvidia also said in its announcement that more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million applications, and that more than 200,000 companies use the platform. "Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in that post.

The questions arrive amid a wider examination of Nvidia's expansion beyond chips. Reuters reported that officials have examined Nvidia's acquisition of SchedMD, a December 2025 purchase, looked at its acquisition of Run:ai, and scrutinized a 2025 arrangement involving technology licensing and engineers from chip startup Groq. The people said investigators have also looked at whether Nvidia offered larger allocations of AI chips when customers bought its networking equipment and Groq processors.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on matters before the department, citing longstanding policy, and added that the department "will continue to prioritize advancement of Super Intelligence," Reuters reported. Nvidia declined to comment, and Hugging Face representatives did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. CNBC said the same day that it confirmed the probe with an unnamed source, according to PYMNTS, and The Next Web also covered the inquiry. Bloomberg reported in September that the department was looking into whether Nvidia structured its Groq licensing agreement to avoid antitrust review, PYMNTS said.

For people who make AI video, Hugging Face is one of the places open-weight models are published and downloaded. Alibaba's Wan models sit on the Wan-AI organization page, and Lightricks distributes its open-weight LTX-2.5 model through the platform for local execution and fine-tuning. Any change to how that distribution point is run or accessed could reach creators who run such models on their own hardware. That is a possibility rather than an announced change: Nvidia has committed to keeping the platform open and to supporting other silicon vendors, terms it has not altered.

Nvidia has said it expects the deal to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.