According to The Information, NVIDIA agreed to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion on August 26, local time. This acquisition aims to hedge against the threat posed by closed-source AI giants like OpenAI developing their own chips, and to gain control over the distribution channels and technical intelligence of the open-source AI ecosystem. The Hugging Face platform hosts over 1 million community-contributed AI models and has over 18 million monthly active visitors. Just days before this deal, Stripe also acquired AI model routing platform OpenRouter for over $8 billion, highlighting that AI "middleware" infrastructure is becoming a core strategic target for large companies.