The U.S. Department of Justice has made inquiries about how Nvidia’s $12.93 billion deal to buy Hugging Face would affect competition in artificial intelligence, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The inquiries come as antitrust enforcers pursue a years-long investigation into the chip designer’s conduct, Reuters reported. Nvidia agreed to buy the open-source platform in September.
The department’s recent questioning covers Nvidia’s acquisitions, investments, sales practices and whether it has pressured customers, the two people said. On Hugging Face, officials have asked whether the deal would let Nvidia capture a fundamental distribution point for AI, the people said. Their questions also include how Nvidia might use the platform to harm rivals and whether it could use the newly acquired business to gain leverage, and officials are asking about Hugging Face’s competitors, according to Reuters.
Nvidia has said the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2027 and that Hugging Face would continue to support work with a range of chip, cloud and AI providers, Reuters reported. CNBC said it separately confirmed the DOJ’s questions about the deal with a source familiar with the matter, and that Reuters reported them first.
Beyond Hugging Face, one of the people told Reuters the department has examined Nvidia’s December 2025 purchase of SchedMD, whose open-source software helps run supercomputers relevant to national security. The people also said the DOJ has scrutinized Nvidia’s conduct after its 2025 deal to license technology from Groq and hire its engineers, which AI Tech Daily covered in September, and has looked at Nvidia’s acquisition of Run:ai. Officials have explored whether Nvidia unfairly offered larger chip allocations to customers that bought its networking equipment and Groq processors, the people said.
A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on any matters before the department, citing longstanding policy. Reuters noted that staff-led DOJ investigations often take years and can stretch from one administration to the next, and that the department routinely seeks input from companies when evaluating proposed mergers. “It would be inappropriate for the Department to conduct a merger investigation under the guise of a conduct investigation,” the DOJ spokesperson said, according to Reuters. Nvidia declined to comment, and Hugging Face representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters said the broader Nvidia examination started under former President Joe Biden and has continued under President Donald Trump, that there is no indication Trump has any involvement, and that the probe may not result in any DOJ action. It also noted that government investigations are not evidence of wrongdoing and do not necessarily result in lawsuits.