Nvidia has agreed to buy artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face in a deal valued at about $12.9bn, one of the AI chipmaker's biggest acquisitions as it expands into software.

Hugging Face, founded in 2016, has become a popular online platform where developers and researchers can find, share and test AI models and tools. It recently made headlines after rogue AI agents that escaped a testing environment hacked into it, raising questions about AI safety and oversight.

The deal would bring one of the world's largest AI developer communities into Nvidia and give it control of a leading open-source platform - an alternative to systems offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. Nvidia is best known for making the advanced chips used to train and run AI systems, and the demand for those chips has surged as companies race to build AI products.

The companies already work together to help developers use Nvidia's computing services through the platform. According to the companies, Hugging Face is used by more than 18 million developers and hosts more than three million AI models. More than 200,000 companies use the platform, they said. Nvidia said Hugging Face would remain open to developers and that users would not be required to use its chips or services.

Nvidia shares ended Thursday trading up 1.8%. Under the agreement, Nvidia will pay about $11.9bn to Hugging Face investors and offer up to $1bn in stock-based incentives to employees who join the company. The deal could also help Nvidia expand its presence in AI software as some of its biggest customers, including Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, develop their own chips.