The three French co-founders of Hugging Face—Clement Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf—have each reached a net worth of $1.8 billion following Nvidia's acquisition of the AI startup in a deal valued at approximately $13 billion, announced this week. Hugging Face, founded in 2016 in Paris, has become a key player in the artificial intelligence platform space, attracting Nvidia's strategic interest.
Nvidia agreed to purchase Hugging Face in a transaction that underscores the growing importance of AI infrastructure and developer tools. The startup, which began as a small Paris-based company, has expanded its footprint globally, offering open-source machine learning models and tools widely used across the AI community. The deal reflects Nvidia's intention to enhance its AI ecosystem by integrating Hugging Face's technology and talent, according to livemint.com.
This acquisition marks one of the largest in the AI startup sector, highlighting the intensifying competition among tech giants to secure advanced AI capabilities. Hugging Face's valuation and the founders' resulting billionaire status place the company alongside other major AI platform providers. The deal also signals a trend of large chipmakers investing directly in AI software companies to complement their hardware offerings, a strategy seen in comparable transactions in recent years.
Following the acquisition, Nvidia plans to integrate Hugging Face's offerings into its AI platform suite, aiming to accelerate AI development and deployment. The deal closed in early September 2026, with the founders' stakes now valued at $1.8 billion each, according to livemint.com.