A report published September 28, 2026, said OpenAI had proposed investing roughly $100 million in Hugging Face. The discussions reportedly ended at an early stage. OpenAI’s proposal was an investment approach, while Nvidia had announced a separate acquisition agreement for Hugging Face.
OpenAI’s reported proposal to Hugging Face
The reported proposal put the potential investment at roughly $100 million. It was not an acquisition offer: the discussions reportedly fell apart in their early stages.
The possible Jalapeño distribution role
The reported discussions also considered Hugging Face as a possible distribution outlet for OpenAI’s custom Jalapeño chips. OpenAI is co-developing the chips with Broadcom. The proposed distribution role did not become an agreement.
Hugging Face is a destination for open-weight models—models whose weights developers can download and deploy on infrastructure of their choice. A distribution role would have placed OpenAI’s chips alongside a platform used to find and deploy those models.
Nvidia’s separate acquisition agreement
Nvidia announced its agreement to acquire Hugging Face on September 3, 2026. The transaction was valued at roughly $12.9 billion, with closing expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.
