- The US Justice Department is examining Nvidia’s planned $12.93 billion acquisition of Hugging Face.
- Officials are asking whether the deal gives Nvidia control over a key AI distribution hub.
- The DOJ probe, which began under the Biden administration, also covers Nvidia’s SchedMD and Run:ai acquisitions and its Groq licensing deal.
- France’s competition authority is separately investigating Nvidia over CUDA lock-in and cloud stakes.
What Happened
The US Justice Department is scrutinizing Nvidia’s planned acquisition of Hugging Face, according to two sources cited by Reuters. Officials are asking whether the $12.93 billion deal, which Nvidia expects to close in the first half of 2027, would give it control over a hub that much of the industry relies on to distribute open-source AI models.
Why It Matters
Hugging Face hosts models and tools used across competing chip and cloud ecosystems. Regulators’ core concern is whether Nvidia owning that hub could disadvantage rival chipmakers or cloud providers that depend on it, extending Nvidia’s hardware dominance into software distribution.
Technical Details
The DOJ inquiry predates this deal: officials have also examined Nvidia’s acquisitions of SchedMD and Run:ai, its licensing arrangement with Groq, and whether Nvidia offered customers better chip allocations in exchange for buying its networking gear and Groq processors together. Nvidia says Hugging Face will keep supporting partnerships across chip, cloud, and AI providers regardless of ownership.
Who’s Affected
The scrutiny adds to Nvidia’s regulatory load: France’s competition authority is investigating the company separately over CUDA software lock-in and its investment stakes in cloud providers like CoreWeave, citing risks of supply restrictions and discriminatory contract terms. Hugging Face’s user base of developers and model publishers is watching to see whether the deal proceeds unchanged.
What’s Next
Nvidia still expects the acquisition to close in the first half of 2027, but a formal DOJ second request or European-style conditions could slow that timeline. The outcome will shape how much ownership concentration regulators tolerate in AI infrastructure broadly.
Source: The Decoder, Oct 29, 2026
Related: Nvidia’s original $12.9 billion Hugging Face acquisition announcement and OpenAI’s reported move to diversify away from Nvidia chips.
