US antitrust regulators are scrutinizing Nvidia and its planned $12.93 billion acquisition of open-source platform Hugging Face. The US Justice Department is examining whether the purchase could give Nvidia control over a critical hub for distributing artificial intelligence and harm its competitors. Nvidia expects the deal to close in the first half of 2027 and states that Hugging Face will continue supporting partnerships with various chip, cloud, and AI providers.
Alongside the Hugging Face purchase, US antitrust officials are investigating Nvidia regarding its broader acquisitions, investments, sales practices, and potential pressure on customers. This ongoing probe covers Nvidia's acquisitions of SchedMD and Run:ai, as well as its licensing agreement with Groq. Regulators are specifically checking whether Nvidia tied the allocation of additional AI chips to customer purchases of Nvidia networking gear and Groq processors.
In addition to the US inquiry, Nvidia is facing regulatory scrutiny in Europe over alleged anticompetitive business practices. France's competition authority is investigating the company due to concerns regarding industry dependence on Nvidia CUDA software and Nvidia investments in cloud providers like CoreWeave. This international antitrust attention matters because it could reshape how dominant hardware and platform providers operate within the artificial intelligence ecosystem.