Hugging Face Says Acquisition and Investment Offers Are Routine
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf declined to comment on reports that Nvidia is close to buying the AI startup for roughly $13 billion, leaving the status of any deal unresolved. Wolf said Hugging Face has long received acquisition and investment offers, but did not identify prospective buyers or suggest the company was pursuing a sale. He also said this summer’s interest was not unusually active.
Wolf declines to address reported Nvidia deal
Ed Ludlow said multiple media outlets had reported that Nvidia was close to acquiring Hugging Face for roughly $13 billion. Bloomberg Tech’s on-screen banner put the reported price at $12.9 billion.
Thomas Wolf declined to comment when asked what he could say about Nvidia buying the company. Pressed on whether there was “nothing in Nvidia buying Hugging Face,” Wolf answered, “No.”
That final answer did not clarify whether Wolf was rejecting the report, declining further comment, or both. His direct position on the reported transaction was that he would not discuss it. The two figures presented in the exchange describe the same press reporting at different levels of precision: Ludlow said roughly $13 billion; Bloomberg Tech displayed $12.9 billion.
Acquisition approaches are a familiar part of Hugging Face’s position
Asked whether Hugging Face’s co-founders were considering a sale generally, Wolf said the company has “always had a lot of interest.” He said Hugging Face often receives offers of both acquisition and investment.
Wolf did not identify prospective buyers or investors, describe any particular offer, or say that the company was pursuing a transaction. His substantive point was broader: interest from potential acquirers and capital providers is recurring rather than novel.
We often have offers both of acquisition and investment.
That distinction leaves the Nvidia report unresolved while placing it alongside a category of approaches Wolf said Hugging Face commonly receives.
Wolf says the summer’s attention was not exceptional
Wolf acknowledged that Hugging Face had been frequently in the news during the summer. He pointed to “the incident of OpenAI” and said open-source models were doing “really, really well.”
But he did not portray that attention as having produced an unusually active period for acquisition or investment interest. “Nothing, nothing very, very special this summer” had occurred on that side, he said.
The result is a deliberately narrow public account: Hugging Face receives recurring acquisition and investment approaches, and Wolf did not characterize the summer’s inbound interest as exceptional. He left the reported Nvidia transaction itself unaddressed.