Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face at a valuation above $13bn, according to Business Insider, days after reports that the open-model hub was exploring a sale at roughly that figure.
The Information puts the process further along than that, reporting an agreed deal at $12.9bn, and Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.
Business Insider reports that the talks have not yet produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart, while The Information describes a deal already agreed, and neither company has confirmed either version.
Nvidia’s silence is the detail people are reading most closely. The company has moved quickly in the past to knock down reports it considers inaccurate, and it has said nothing at all about this one.
What gives the story its edge is that Hugging Face has already turned Nvidia down once. It declined a $500mn investment that would have valued it at $7bn, on the reasoning that no single investor should hold that much sway over what is meant to be neutral infrastructure.
