Look Up Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Creator Playbook Say More Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List All Series Nvidia's Hugging Face purchase confirmed at $13 billion The open source platform that was recently hacked by rogue OpenAI agents is now owned by the AI industry leader. The open source AI platform Hugging Face has been acquired by Nvidia. It's official: Nvidia has acquired the open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $13 billion. Or, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the acquisition was for $12,930,300,000, to be exact. In a post on Nvidia's website on Thursday, Huang confirmed that the chipmaker turned AI industry giant has officially purchased Hugging Face after reports said an acquisition was in the making last week.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Trending Now Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag All Series Nvidia to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, report says The chipmaker may be the new steward of Hugging Face's open-source AI model library. Amanda Yeo is an Assistant Editor at Mashable, covering entertainment, culture, tech, science, and social good. Based in Australia, she writes about everything from video games and K-pop to movies and gadgets. Nvidia has reportedly struck a deal to buy open-source AI company Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. If it goes through, the chipmaker could soon be steward to a millions-strong community of AI developers.

The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. Even for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers. It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (£365bn).

Chipmaker Kioxia's market value halves from peak on AI selloff Kioxia overtook auto giant Toyota in market cap value in mid-June, but its ranking has since dropped to the fourth-largest Japanese company, as traders grow more critical over artificial intelligence. Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings' market capitalization halved in just a month since becoming the nation's most valuable company, on growing concerns the artificial intelligence-driven rally in the sector has gone too far. Kioxia shares tumbled as much as 16% in Tokyo's morning trading on Friday, down 52% from last month's peak and losing at least ¥30 trillion ($185 billion) in value. In mid-June, Kioxia overtook auto giant Toyota in market cap value after the stock rallied more than 600% from the start of the year, driven by exuberance about demand for memory and data storage amid an AI boom. Its ranking has since dropped to the fourth-largest Japanese company. "The chip sector is vulnerable to the silicon cycle, and we've seen this pattern many times before," said Yugo Tsuboi, chief strategist at Daiwa Securities.

Hiroo Ota (center left), CEO of Kioxia Holdings, and others unveil Kioxia's new 3D flash memory chip at its Kitakami plant in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, on Friday. Kioxia Holdings has started shipping samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to artificial-intelligence data center operators, seeking to gain ground in the lucrative business against rivals. The Tokyo-based chipmaker's latest high-density 3D flash memory chips aim to better meet AI data center needs with better efficiency and transmission speeds. The 332-layer 10th-generation chips pack more data into silicon and can store 59% more data compared with its previous flagship 8th-generation chip, the company said Friday. Production will take place at the company's second manufacturing facility at its Kitakami plant in Iwate Prefecture, which began operating in September last year.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung delivers a speech on June 25. SEOUL - South Korea is set to unveil three "mega-projects" to fuel its next growth phase, including a new semiconductor hub in the southwest that local media say could attract investments by Samsung and SK spanning hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. The announcement would mark President Lee Jae Myung's boldest push yet to align South Korea's AI and chip ambitions with his pledge to narrow regional disparities and revive economies beyond the Seoul metropolitan area. Lee will preside over the event, framed as a national "great leap" due to be unveiled around 2 p.m., his office said, with ministries covering industry, science, climate and transport set to outline policy support. Samsung Electronics and SK are expected to present investment plans, and their chairmen, Jay Y. Lee and Chey Tae-won, are among business leaders tipped to attend by local media. Representatives of other firms including LG Electronics, HD Hyundai Robotics, Korea Electric Power Corp. and Korea Water Resources Corp. are also attending, Lee's office said.

World's largest chipmaker does not rule out price rises as costs increase The world's largest chipmaker has told the BBC that inflation is pushing up the cost of doing business, and did not rule out price rises. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) makes the most advanced chips designed by companies such as Nvidia, AMD and Apple, so any increase in pricing could ripple through to the cost of AI infrastructure, and potentially over time, the prices customers pay for their electronic devices. However, the firm's chief financial officer, Wendell Huang, said it would not introduce sudden fourfold, fivefold price rises. We reflect our value, he said, pointing to its technology leadership and manufacturing excellence. In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, Huang also denied that the AI boom was a bubble and that the firm's global expansion was due to geopolitical pressure.

Samsung averted fears of a strike after the deal was made to pay special bonuses to employees at the world's largest memory chipmaker. Samsung averted fears of a strike after the deal was made to pay special bonuses to employees at the world's largest memory chipmaker. Employees at Samsung Electronics's memory chip division are to receive bonuses averaging about £310,000 each through a landmark profit-sharing agreement, as the AI boom drives up chipmakers' profits. Fears of a strike at Samsung were averted on Wednesday after two unions for the world's largest memory chipmaker said that 74% of the 62,616 workers who cast their votes had backed the deal. The agreement, mediated by South Korea's government, means Samsung will set aside 10.5% of operating profits at its semiconductor division to pay special bonuses to its chip workers.

The long-awaited V4 is more efficient and a win for Chinese chipmakers. On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek's previous models, V4 is open source, meaning it is available for anyone to download, use, and modify. V4 marks DeepSeek's most significant release since R1, the reasoning model it launched in January 2025. R1, which was trained on limited computing resources, stunned the global AI industry with its strong performance and efficiency, turning DeepSeek from a little-known research team into China's best-known AI company almost overnight.

'Physical AI' Is Coming for Your Car What the latest tech-marketing buzzword has to say about the future of automotive. The systems powering the autonomous features in the Afeela 1 and Afeela prototype, both announced at CES, are the embodiment of "physical AI." Courtesy of Sony Honda Mobility Physical AI sounds like a contradiction in terms. But for the marketing architects, it's the latest term of art, a buzzword meant to point us citizens toward a bright and promising technological future. Back here on earth, the term is maybe most useful as a way to understand how automotive companies are thinking about themselves right now: as tech pioneers. It's also a handy shortcut to understanding how appetizing the automotive industry is for the companies that make chips-- what could be a $123 billion opportunity by 2032, up some 85 percent from 2023. The giant CES consumer tech showcase that just took place in Las Vegas always has its share of goofy robot demos, but this year's presentations showed how the world of robots, cars, and chipsets are growing ever closer.