U.S. Justice Department asks about Nvidia's $12.9 billion purchase of Hugging Face, Reuters reports
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
The largest platform for open models has landed in an antitrust review: the agency is asking whether a chip supplier could gain control over how models reach developers.
According to Reuters (as published by The Next Web), citing two people familiar with the matter, the U.S. Department of Justice is asking whether Nvidia would gain "a fundamental distribution point for SI" through the deal and could use the platform to harm competitors. Nvidia announced the purchase of Hugging Face in September 2026, and closing is expected in the first half of 2027. The Justice Department and Nvidia declined to comment. The questions about the deal are, by the same account, part of a long-running antitrust investigation of Nvidia that began under President Biden: the agency is examining the company's deals, its stakes in other firms and its chip sales practices.
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