Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced his departure on Thursday, prompting Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue to post on X that the company will "keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever." The post came after Nvidia disclosed a plan in September to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, a deal that the U.S. Department of Justice began probing in October for antitrust concerns. The acquisition is still slated to close in the first half of 2027, and Hugging Face has not yet confirmed discussions with Nvidia interim CEO Colette Kress.
Huang’s exit removes a known champion of open-weight models from Nvidia, raising uncertainty about the future openness of the $12.9 billion acquisition and its impact on the broader AI model distribution ecosystem. Ongoing DOJ scrutiny could delay or reshape the deal, influencing competitive dynamics for cloud providers and open-source AI platforms.