US investigates Nvidia's purchase of Hugging Face and its business practices

The US Department of Justice is examining Nvidia's planned acquisition of the open-source platform Hugging Face, according to two sources cited by Reuters and reported by The Decoder. Department officials are asking whether the deal could give Nvidia control of a key hub for AI distribution and harm its competitors.

The deal is valued at $12.93 billion, and Nvidia expects to close it in the first half of 2027. The company says Hugging Face will continue to support partnerships with a range of chip, cloud and AI providers.

At the same time, US antitrust regulators are investigating Nvidia's acquisitions, investments and sales practices, as well as possible pressure on its customers. According to the sources, the investigation began under the Biden administration and has continued under the Trump administration.

According to the same sources, officials have also looked at the purchases of SchedMD and Run:ai, as well as the licensing agreement with Groq. They are also checking whether Nvidia offered customers more AI chips if they also bought Nvidia networking equipment and Groq processors.

Nvidia is also facing scrutiny in Europe. France's competition authority is investigating the company over alleged anticompetitive practices. It is concerned about the industry's dependence on the CUDA programming software and about Nvidia's stakes in cloud providers such as CoreWeave. The regulator pointed to possible risks such as supply restrictions, abusive contractual terms and discrimination against certain customers.

It is worth noting that this is a brief news item: the available material only covers investigations and questions from regulators, not conclusions or formal accusations.