A $25 billion valuation and a $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal are among the numbers in circulation; neither is confirmed as the subject of a new Nvidia move
October 12, 2026 – Nvidia may be preparing to raise its stake in, or acquire, an open-source AI startup valued around $25 billion, according to a Times of India headline. The report doesn’t name the company, and I haven’t been able to confirm the claim.
The $25 billion figure matches Reflection AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of open-source models. Reuters reported in March that it was raising $2.5 billion at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, up from about $8 billion. Reports I found do not say Nvidia plans to buy it or increase its holding.
Nvidia’s open-source ambitions are well documented. The Information reported in August that it agreed to buy Hugging Face, the model-sharing platform, for $12.9 billion. Nvidia and Hugging Face have not officially confirmed that. A source told CNBC that acquisition talks were ongoing.
Nvidia also signed a $6 billion licensing deal with Poolside and, at its August earnings, said it holds $99 billion in equity investments with $25 billion more pledged. The company has argued that strong open models keep customers tied to its hardware as closed-model labs like OpenAI and Anthropic build their own chips.
