NVIDIA was once so hostile to open source that Linus Torvalds gave the company the finger. Today, it maintains open Linux modules, releases hundreds of models and datasets, and has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. WHAT?!
The change makes sense once we examine what NVIDIA learned from nearly dying with NV1, spending years searching for CUDA’s market, and watching researchers discover deep learning on gaming GPUs.
In this episode, we follow that strategy from NV1 and CUDA to NVIDIA’s reported $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, and ask whether the company has found the most profitable model for open-source AI.
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Links:
NVIDIA FY2026 Form 10-K https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000021/nvda-20260125.htm
Interview with Spencer Huang (Nvidia) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEv9EnD7JVU&t=1231
Interview with Clem Delangue (Hugging Face) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfJV722V1WY
NVIDIA Open Source https://opensource.nvidia.com/en-us
NVIDIA on Hugging Face https://huggingface.co/nvidia
Reuters on the reported $12.9B agreement https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-talks-acquire-hugging-face-13-billion-deal-business-insider-reports-2026-08-27/
NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel Modules https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules
Turing Post’s history of computer vision and AlexNet https://www.turingpost.com/p/cvhistory6
#NVIDIA #OpenSourceAI #HuggingFace #AI #GitHub
