Nvidia's $12.93B Hugging Face Deal Draws DOJ Antitrust Probe

The Justice Department has started asking questions about Nvidia's $12.93 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, with antitrust staff examining whether the deal would let the chipmaker "capture a fundamental distribution point for AI," pymnts.com reported, summarizing Reuters reporting sourced to two people familiar with the matter.

The inquiry extends a years-long DOJ probe of Nvidia's conduct that began under President Joe Biden and has carried into the Trump administration. Alongside Hugging Face, DOJ staff have also been looking at Nvidia's December 2025 acquisition of supercomputing software firm SchedMD and a roughly $20 billion licensing and talent arrangement with Groq, in which Nvidia "licensed Groq's technology and hired its top executives rather than buying the company" outright.

Nvidia expects the Hugging Face deal to close in the first half of 2027 and has said the platform will stay neutral across rival processors, clouds, and software. Hugging Face carries roughly $150 million in annualized revenue. Nvidia declined to comment and Hugging Face did not respond; a Justice Department spokesperson said, "Government investigations aren't evidence of wrongdoing."

Nvidia's last attempt at a transformational acquisition did not finish. The FTC sued in December 2021 to block its $40 billion deal for Arm Ltd., and Nvidia abandoned it in 2022. The probe lands amid a steady run of AI regulatory activity; our regulation tracker logged 267 stories in the past 90 days.