DOJ Probes Nvidia's $13 Billion Hugging Face Acquisition

The US Justice Department is reportedly asking how Nvidia's acquisition of the AI platform Hugging Face would affect competition across the industry. Nvidia agreed in September to buy Hugging Face, with the price reported at roughly $13 billion.

The department is said to be putting questions to market participants about how the deal could change the competitive landscape for Nvidia's rivals. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Hugging Face's position is at the center of the questions

Hugging Face runs an open-source platform where new AI models are hosted and tested, and the department's concerns appear to stem from the role that platform plays in the industry. The company also sells AI infrastructure.

The move can be read as an effort by Nvidia to lock in an important distribution channel for its own products.

Not Nvidia's first brush with scrutiny

This is not the first time Nvidia has drawn the Justice Department's attention. As the company has become increasingly critical to the technology sector, and to AI in particular, it has faced growing scrutiny inside the US government that stretches back to the Biden administration. The situation did not ease under President Trump, who was reported to have considered breaking the company up even though he allegedly did not fully know what it was.

More recently, Nvidia and other makers of AI hardware have also run into export restrictions. Nvidia's most powerful AI-focused hardware can be sold only to approved entities, and shipments to countries such as China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are barred.

The SchedMD and Groq files

The department has also examined Nvidia's acquisition of SchedMD, the developer of software used in supercomputers tied to national security. As part of a broader three-year investigation, Nvidia committed to continuing support for that software.

Officials are also said to be assessing whether Nvidia promised customers a larger allocation of its AI chips if they also bought its networking hardware and Groq chips. Nvidia bought Groq in December 2025 for $20 billion, a deal that also brought key team members, including the startup's CEO, over to Nvidia.

On Hugging Face, Nvidia has confirmed that it will keep supporting a range of chip and AI providers after the acquisition closes. Nvidia was asked for comment, but no response had been received at the time of publication.