Tech, in brief

Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9bn, The Information reported on Wednesday night. [1][2]

Hugging Face is where most developers go to download open AI models, the ones anyone can run for free. [1][3]

Business Insider reported the same night that no agreement has been signed, and that the talks could still fall apart. [2]

Neither company would comment. TechCrunch noted that Nvidia normally moves quickly to knock down reports it thinks are wrong. [2]

Earlier this year Hugging Face refused $500m from Nvidia at a $7bn valuation. It said it did not want one dominant investor swaying its decisions. [3]

Nvidia sells chips. Free open models give buyers an alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic, and every one of them still needs chips to run. [2]

That is why Nvidia has already put tens of billions into building open models it does not sell. [2]

OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic are all building their own chips. OpenAI's Jalapeno beat Nvidia's GB300 on work per unit of power in published tests. [2][10]

Nvidia scaled back its own cloud service a year ago. Hugging Face already rents computing power to developers, which is a way back in. [2]

On Wednesday Nvidia forecast about 70% revenue growth next year and $108bn for the current quarter. Shares rose nearly 5% after hours. [5]

Hugging Face fought off July's break-in using an Nvidia version of a Chinese open model. Its chief executive said so on television this month. [1][2]

Why it matters. Watch for a signed agreement, or a denial. Business Insider reported that neither has come, and Nvidia normally moves fast to correct reports it thinks are wrong. [2]

Prosecutors in Keelung indicted nine people, including one Nvidia employee and two from Supermicro. Seventy-four banned B300 servers reached China through Indonesia, Japan and Hong Kong. [15][16][17]

Why it matters. The export rules failed inside the companies that police them; Supermicro fired staff over a $2.5bn case days earlier. [18]

The United States is investigating Apex Logistics, a Singapore freight firm, over suspected Nvidia chip smuggling. It would be the first case against a transport company. [4]

Why it matters. Enforcement is moving from who makes the chips to who moves them. [4]

Washington is weighing tariffs that would cover laptops, games consoles and data-centre servers, not only chips, Politico reported. Howard Lutnick wants relief tied to US factory investment. [19][20]

Why it matters. It would put a price on the finished machine, which is how most imported chips actually arrive.

SK Hynix started a $4bn packaging plant at Purdue Research Park. Cleanroom work opens in the second half of 2028 and mass production of new memory follows in 2029. [21][22]

Why it matters. Washington is paying up to $458m in grants and $500m in loans, and packaging is the step Nvidia's fastest chips cannot skip. [21][22]

TrendForce expects memory to take 68% of cloud operators' hardware spending in 2027, up from 47% this year. It sees enterprise drive prices up 235% over the year. [23]

Why it matters. OVHcloud has warned of price rises up to 87%, and Micron says an AI memory chip uses three times the silicon of an ordinary one. [23][24]

OpenAI's Jalapeno chip, built with Broadcom, drew 700 watts and did 1.5 to 1.9 times more work per kilowatt than Nvidia's 1,400-watt flagship in published tests. [10]

Why it matters. It ships in small volumes late this year, and answering questions is the fastest-growing part of Nvidia's business. [8][9]

Poland's digital minister asked the European Commission to fine Meta 250 million euros. Its cyber agency flagged 122 fraudulent adverts and Meta declined to remove 106 of them. [25][26]

Why it matters. Poland cannot fine Meta itself. Only the Commission can, and it has been slow on the Meta cases already open. [26][27]

Amazon agreed to buy DuckLabs of Amsterdam, whose roughly 30 engineers build the DuckDB database. DuckDB itself stays free under its own foundation and licence. [28]

Why it matters. AWS is buying the people, not the code, which the open licence already let it use. [28]

Ofgem wants data-centre developers to lodge deposits that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, and to prove they have customers and funding, before joining the connection queue. [29]

Why it matters. The queue is jammed with projects that will never be built, which wrecks any forecast of how much power Britain needs. [29]

A review of polling found opposition is driven by local bills, noise and water, not by views on AI or China. Some customers of the PJM grid saw bills rise up to 76%. [30]

Why it matters. In Piketon, Ohio, where a $500bn site is planned, the mayor of 23 years says no resident has come to the council to object. [42]

Gas power in development purely for US data centres has jumped to more than 189 gigawatts, from 97 gigawatts at the end of 2025, Global Energy Monitor found. [31]

Why it matters. The US is now building twice as much gas capacity as China, at a capital cost above $647bn. [32]

Z.ai confirmed it built Ox Alpha, the anonymous model developers had been testing, and released its weights. Alibaba's new Qwen3.8-Flash claims a ninth of its predecessor's training cost. [11][12]

Why it matters. Cheap capable Chinese models are exactly what makes Nvidia's hardware more valuable and a paid frontier model less so. [11]

GitHub's build service failed for nearly three hours on Wednesday after a database problem. Its uptime for Actions this month stands at 98.13%. [33]

Why it matters. GitHub has had at least 23 incidents every month this year, and blames AI agents for the load. [33]

The Government Accountability Office found that 5% of the CHIPS Act's $11bn research fund has been allocated, and that Commerce has published no plan for the rest. [34]

Why it matters. Commerce cancelled the $7.4bn contract of the consortium meant to run the research centre in August 2025. [34]

Marvell's filing describes warrants that let Google convert revenue targets into stock. That is not the flat $120bn of chip orders the headlines carried. [35]

Why it matters. Marvell's share price rose $18.6bn that day, more than the $12.5bn the warrants are worth. [35]

Clara Shih, who ran Meta's business AI group, told Platformer she stopped posting entry-level jobs after watching agents do work that used to take a whole product team. [41]

Why it matters. Reuters reported that Mark Zuckerberg's plan to cut as much as 60% of staff this year was derailed partly by agents that underperformed. [41]

Ireland still bans funding a lawsuit you are not party to, under a statute from 1634. Only one collective action has been filed there since the EU created the right in 2020. [40]

Why it matters. The European right exists. The money to bring the case does not. [40]

Judge Ethan Schulman tentatively refused California's request to block Amazon from pressing brands to keep rivals' prices up, saying the state relied on evidence from 2023. [36]

Why it matters. The trial still starts in January, so the state loses the injunction, not the case. [36]

Instinct, a personal assistant app, has now raised $350m at a $2.5bn valuation. Socure was valued at $5.2bn and bought Fravity. Robotics startup Generalist reached $3bn. [37][38][39]

Why it matters. All three sell software that acts rather than answers, which is what investors are paying for this month.

Chinese customs are delaying germanium, quartz and magnet shipments to Taiwanese optics, chip-equipment and aerospace firms, Nikkei reported. Some Taiwanese makers lost orders while waiting. [43]

Why it matters. Beijing does not need an embargo when its export paperwork can simply take longer. [43]