Nvidia already sells most of the chips that AI runs on. Now regulators want to know what happens if it also owns one of the most popular places where AI models live.
The US Department of Justice has asked Nvidia for information about how its $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face could affect competitors, CNBC reports, confirming an inquiry first reported by Reuters on Wednesday. CNBC confirmed the probe through a person familiar with the matter.
Why Hugging Face matters
Hugging Face runs a widely used open-source platform for hosting and testing AI models, and it sells infrastructure and collaboration tools to the tech industry, including chip companies. When Nvidia announced the deal in September, it said more than 18 million people and more than 200,000 companies used Hugging Face to share at least 3 million models and 500,000 datasets.
At the time, CEO Jensen Huang wrote that the acquisition would help “expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide.” Nvidia declined to comment to CNBC on the inquiry.
CNBC says the closest comparison is GitHub, which Microsoft bought in 2018 for $7.5 billion.
Part of a bigger review
Hugging Face is Nvidia’s second-biggest purchase, after the $20 billion it paid for Groq assets at the end of last year, a deal CNBC says has also drawn DOJ scrutiny. The Hugging Face deal is not expected to close until the first half of 2027.
The question at the heart of the inquiry, as CNBC describes it, is how the deal may impact competitors in the field. That matters because Hugging Face doesn’t only serve Nvidia’s customers: it is used by developers working across many chips, clouds and model providers, including companies that compete with Nvidia directly.
Why it matters
Open model hubs are now critical infrastructure for enterprise AI teams. Any change to who controls them, or how neutral they stay, matters to companies building on non-Nvidia hardware or multi-cloud stacks.
For AI infrastructure vendors and cloud providers, the review keeps the competitive question open into 2027. That’s a window to remind buyers about portability and choice, and to reach AI platform teams who are weighing long-term bets.
Sources: CNBC. Written by the xRapid Media LLP team.
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