The transaction under review
The United States Department of Justice is examining Nvidia's plan to acquire Hugging Face, the open-source platform for distributing artificial intelligence models. According to two sources cited by Reuters and reported by The Decoder, antitrust officials intend to determine whether the transaction could give the company control of a central node in AI distribution, to the detriment of competitors. The deal is worth $12.93 billion, and Nvidia expects to close it in the first half of 2027.
The company's reassurances
Nvidia said Hugging Face will continue to support partnerships with various chip, cloud and artificial intelligence service providers. In the available material, the company did not provide further details on how it intends to preserve the platform's openness or on the timing of the review. The Department of Justice's review therefore remains ongoing, and it is not known whether it could result in conditions, requests for remedies or a block of the transaction.
The significance of the case depends on the nature of Hugging Face, which in the text is described as a hub for the distribution of AI models. This is the point on which the regulators' assessment focuses: establishing whether the change of ownership could alter access to the platform for competing operators.
A broader investigative front
The review of the acquisition is part of a wider investigation by US antitrust authorities into acquisitions, investments, sales practices and possible pressure on customers by Nvidia. The proceeding began during Joe Biden's presidency and continued under Donald Trump. According to the sources, officials also examined the acquisitions of SchedMD and Run:ai and the licensing agreement with Groq.
Another line of inquiry concerns commercial terms: whether Nvidia offered more AI chips to customers who also purchased networking equipment and Groq processors. This is an allegation under investigation, not a finding. The US case and the French case are proceeding on separate tracks, and the material does not indicate any formal links between the two investigations.
The European front
In Europe, the French competition authority is investigating alleged anticompetitive business practices by Nvidia. The regulator has expressed concern about the sector's dependence on Nvidia's CUDA programming software and about the company's stakes in cloud providers such as CoreWeave. Possible risks cited include supply restrictions, unfair contractual clauses and discrimination against certain customers.
These elements are concerns expressed by the authority, not definitive conclusions. The outcome of the investigations, their timing and any measures that might be adopted remain to be established.
