Hugging Face gets a reported $12.9B bid

Distribution got expensive. A reported Hugging Face deal carried two accounts: The Information said Nvidia agreed to pay $12.9 billion, while Business Insider said talks above $13 billion had not produced a signed agreement; neither company commented. The range follows Hugging Face’s $235 million raise at a $4.5 billion valuation in 2023. At the other end, Thomson Reuters says its proprietary model launch cost $40 million and has used less than 10% of its content so far. Distribution and proprietary data now command very different checks.

That valuation only matters if models can reach compute. The Nscale compute agreement commits Anthropic to $45 billion over six years for about 460 megawatts, with Vera Rubin hardware expected in late 2027. The campus could reach 1.35 gigawatts; planning documents put the build and power plant at $71 billion, including $47 billion for chips. Thomson’s model launch used hundreds of experts and less than 10% of company content, Thomson Reuters says. Scarcity is splitting into two markets: megawatts for general scale, curation for domain performance.

Both paths still meet at the Hub. Hugging Face acquisition reports put annual revenue near $150 million, up from roughly $100 million two months earlier, while the company founded in 2016 has not commented on a sale. Nscale’s compute pipeline pairs a $51 billion backlog with roughly $100 million booked in a recent quarter. And Thomson’s open-weight release will return a smaller version to Hugging Face for academic and non-commercial use. The common asset is access: to models, infrastructure, and the specialized data that makes either useful.

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