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Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang NVDA
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President & Director, NVIDIA
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Hugging Face deal: Open models matter greatly to our company

📅 Sep 03, 2026 CNBC Television 10 MIN 145033 VIEWS 17 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue join 'Squawk Box' to discuss Nvidia's deal to acquire Hugging Face for for $12.9 billion, how the deal came about, the importance of open models, and more.

What Jensen Huang said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Jensen Huang discussed Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. He emphasized that open models are crucial to Nvidia, which is the largest AI computing platform globally. Huang noted that while closed models are excellent and Nvidia uses services like Claude Code, Codex, Perplexity, and Cursor, open models are essential for companies needing control, ownership, and protection of proprietary information. He highlighted Hugging Face's scale: 200,000 enterprise customers, 18 million developers, and 3 million models. Huang said the price reflected the company's worth and the importance of open models to Nvidia, and he confirmed that other bidders were involved. He stressed that both closed and open AI are growing rapidly, with cloud service providers representing only half of Nvidia's business, the rest driven by open models. Huang expressed commitment to scaling the open model ecosystem and community.

Key takeaways

  1. Nvidia acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, a price Huang said was worth every penny.
  2. Huang confirmed other bidders were involved and that the price was what it took to close the deal.
  3. Huang stated that cloud service providers represent only half of Nvidia's business, with the other half driven by open models.
  4. Huang said Hugging Face has 200,000 enterprise customers, 18 million developers, and 3 million models.
  5. Huang recommended using closed models when possible, citing Nvidia's own use of Claude Code, Codex, Perplexity, and Cursor.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
$12.93 billion Acquisition price for Hugging Face price 0:00
200,000 Hugging Face enterprise customers metric 5:45
18 million Hugging Face developers metric 5:45
3 million Models available on Hugging Face metric 5:45
10 years Time Hugging Face has been working on open models timeline 5:45
6 months Period of accelerating AI usefulness timeline 3:01

Chapters

  1. 0:00Acquisition announcement and background
  2. 0:45Open source AI turning point
  3. 3:01Balancing closed and open AI
  4. 5:45Hugging Face's scale and value
  5. 7:51Deal rationale and other bidders
  6. 9:14Hugging Face team joining Nvidia

Questions asked in this interview

3
  1. 1:32When that happened, what we realized is that we needed open models, right?
  2. 2:37How do you walk this path between closed AI and open AI?
  3. 5:21And how did you all get to the $12.93 billion price tag?
Interviewer 0:00 ↗
Nvidia is officially acquiring Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Joining us to talk about this deal right now is Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue. Gentlemen, welcome to both of you. It's good to see you. And Jensen, I like your sign. It's the hugging face. All right, gentlemen.
Clément Delangue 0:21 ↗
I have one in the background, too.
Interviewer 0:23 ↗
Yes, I see the one right behind you. This deal has been rumored. There have been people speculating about this for well over a week at this point. What happened? How did you two get together?
Clément Delangue 0:37 ↗
Well, we—
Interviewer 0:40 ↗
Well, go ahead, Jensen.
Jensen Huang 0:42 ↗
No, Clem, I'm going to let you go first.
Clément Delangue 0:45 ↗
Yeah. During the summer, I think we realized that Hugging Face and open source AI in general was at a turning point and that it needed more resources, more scale, more visibility. So we went to see Jensen and we told him we want to make open source AI big. And he told us, "Let's do it." So that's really how it started, and a few weeks later, here we are.
Interviewer 1:13 ↗
Clem, what happened over the summer? Because when you say something happened over the summer, the first thing that pops to my mind was OpenAI's agents kind of breaking in between May and July. You catching them, finding that was there. Was that the catalyst, or were there other things happening that made you think we really need deeper pockets?

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Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Huang, J. (2026, September 3). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Hugging Face deal: Open models matter greatly to our company [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303218/

MLA

Jensen Huang. "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Hugging Face deal: Open models matter greatly to our company." CNBC Television, 3 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303218/.

BibTeX 
@misc{huang2026_1303218,
  author       = {Jensen Huang},
  title        = {Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Hugging Face deal: Open models matter greatly to our company},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {sep},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303218/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}