Nvidia's Capital Goes Everywhere at Once — and Regulators Are Taking Notes

Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93B and is in early talks for a $10B Anthropic IPO stake, as the DOJ reviews its Groq licensing deal.

There is a version of Nvidia that no longer resembles a chipmaker. It looks more like a sovereign entity running its own foreign policy, infrastructure program and trade agreements simultaneously — and this week offered a fresh reminder of just how far that expansion now reaches.

Two threads dominate. The first is capital deployment at a scale that would once have been unthinkable for a semiconductor company: a $12.93 billion takeover of Hugging Face, announced in early September and described by Reuters as the largest acquisition in Nvidia's history, alongside negotiations over an anchor investment of as much as $10 billion in Anthropic's planned IPO. The second is the scrutiny that inevitably follows. The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an inquiry, according to a New York Times report cited by Reuters, into whether Nvidia structured its licensing deal with AI startup Groq in a way that sidestepped antitrust review. That arrangement was announced last year at a volume of $17 billion, including a non-exclusive license and the transfer of executives.

For shareholders, the pattern is becoming familiar: the more aggressively Nvidia grows, the more often competition authorities come knocking. It is not an isolated case — it is the price of near-unrivalled dominance in a market this size.

Software, Community and the Long Wait Until 2027

The Hugging Face deal is not simply about hardware supremacy. Roughly $11.9 billion of the purchase price flows to investors, with up to a further $1 billion reserved as stock-based retention payments for employees joining Nvidia. Closing is not expected until the first half of 2027, subject to antitrust clearance — a timeline that sits at the heart of the story rather than at its margins. What Nvidia is buying is a stake in the software and community layer of AI development, where Hugging Face operates as a central open platform for developers.

The Anthropic talks point in the same direction. The AI developer aims to raise up to $100 billion in its listing at a targeted valuation of roughly $2 trillion, with completion sought before the U.S. midterm elections in November. Nothing is binding yet; the discussions remain at an early stage. But the strategic logic is already visible — Nvidia is positioning itself not only as a supplier of chips but as a financier across the entire AI ecosystem.

The Numbers Behind the Bet

Whether that anchor investment reads as strategic insurance or as an expensive concentration risk comes down to one ratio: capital deployed versus actual growth momentum at Anthropic. The developer lifted its annualized revenue run rate from around $9 billion at the end of 2025 to more than $65 billion by the end of July — a multiple in a matter of months. Projections for 2028 point to $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue. If that trajectory holds, a multi-billion-dollar anchor stake looks like a logical extension of an existing relationship: Nvidia already committed up to $10 billion in November 2025, while Anthropic in parallel earmarked $30 billion for Azure computing capacity running on Nvidia chips.

Infrastructure partnerships reinforce the picture. Nvidia holds stakes in several multi-billion-dollar data center projects, including through GPU startup Nscale, which supplies Microsoft and Anthropic with Nvidia hardware. Upstream, TSMC reported record August revenue of NT$514.81 billion, up 53.3 percent year on year — evidence of unabated demand for advanced chips, from which Nvidia benefits as the foundry's largest customer.

The reverse side carries real weight. TSMC has signaled price increases of up to 10 percent for 2027, pressure that would feed into the cost structure of semiconductor companies, Nvidia included. Skepticism about AI valuations is also building: investor Michael Burry publicly called the rally in AI-linked stocks "FOMO"-driven, albeit in reference to a different company — the underlying doubt about stretched AI multiples applies across the sector. Should Anthropic's growth flatten or the IPO timetable slip past the midterms, Nvidia would be left holding a large, illiquid stake in a private company with an uncertain exit window. Export controls on AI-relevant chip trade with China remain in force, with Chinese authorities now reviewing individual shipments case by case.

Gigawatts, Desktops and the Physical Layer

Below the headline deals, Nvidia keeps building the physical base of its ambitions. At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference, the company stressed that the AI buildout is still in its early stages and that demand remains strong across cloud providers, enterprise customers, device makers and so-called neoclouds. In Australia, together with partners including Firmus, CDC, NEXTDC and AirTrunk, Nvidia plans up to two gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2027 — a signal that its business is increasingly secured through participation across the entire infrastructure chain rather than through chip sales alone.

The same technology is meanwhile filtering into everyday settings. Lenovo and Acer will bring the first Windows PCs with the RTX Spark chip to market in October, moving AI from the data center to the desktop. At IBC, Nvidia showcased real-time AI for broadcast, sport and streaming, while a collaboration with Palantir Technologies targets sovereign AI for critical supply chains, starting with Nvidia's own operations. The breadth is almost dizzying, and that is precisely the message: Nvidia is attempting to be infrastructure provider, software platform and device maker at the same time.

What the Market Is Actually Pricing

The stock closed Friday at EUR 188.22, virtually unchanged from the previous day, but roughly 7 percent below its 52-week high of EUR 202.50 reached in May. On a year-to-date basis it is still up 17 percent. The RSI of 48.9 points to neutral sentiment, while 30-day volatility of 40 percent suggests investors remain sensitive to news of this kind.

That gap tells its own story. The market continues to price in the long-term growth narrative while staying cautious about the regulatory headwinds that grow with every new acquisition. The question for the months ahead is therefore not whether Nvidia keeps expanding, but whether antitrust authorities can keep pace with that expansion without putting the brakes on it. The next concrete checkpoint is Anthropic's official IPO timetable, details of which have yet to be finalized. Until then, the investment decision itself remains an announcement under negotiation — not a completed step.