Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, the widely used open-source repository often described as the "GitHub of AI," for $12.9 billion, according to a report from The Information published Wednesday, marking one of the most significant consolidation moves yet in the artificial intelligence industry.

The Information reported the deal, citing a person with knowledge of the agreement, describing Hugging Face as "a company known for its GitHub-like repository of open-source AI models." Reuters subsequently reported the news as well, noting that Nvidia and New York-based Hugging Face did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

Hugging Face has become an indispensable platform for AI developers, researchers and companies building applications on top of machine learning technology, hosting a vast repository of pre-trained models, datasets and tools spanning natural language processing, computer vision and other areas of AI development. According to Tech Startups, the acquisition would give Nvidia something it cannot manufacture in a semiconductor fab: a massive community of AI developers and a repository that has become the default destination for sharing and discovering models, datasets and machine learning tools.

Nvidia already dominates the underlying hardware used to train and run many of the AI models hosted on Hugging Face's platform. Acquiring the company would extend that dominance further up the broader AI technology stack, giving Nvidia a significant position in the........

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