A Chinese Chipmaker Raised $911M

1) Nvidia Buys the Home of Shared AI Models For $12.93B

On September 3, Nvidia announced that it had agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Hugging Face is an online library where developers publish and download AI models. They crossed $100M+ ARR in mid-2026 through three product tiers layered on top of its free hub:

The platform is used by more than 18 million people and 200,000 companies. It holds more than 3 million models and 500,000 collections of material used to build and test them. It also hosts 1 million AI applications.

Many of those models are open-weight, so developers can freely download and run them without permission from the creator. Nvidia says Hugging Face will continue to stay a vibrant home for the open-model developer community, supporting competing hardware and cloud services. Nvidia itself is the largest contributor of open models and data to Hugging Face, and their contributions continue to grow. Their goals align with making AI more open, more capable, and more accessible to people and institutions around the world.

When I saw this announcement, I texted Jensen, “This is the most incredible thing that you’ve done.” I truly believe that this Hugging Face acquisition will go down as one of the most important transactions in AI because you now have the largest competitor and the most well-capitalized company as a bulwark against the closed-source oligopoly in America.

It creates more rational competition across the stack. Everybody is becoming everything, as major companies expand up and down the stack.

Last month, Nvidia spent $6B on a licensing agreement and a $1B equity investment in Poolside, an AI startup that builds open-source AI software models. This shows Nvidia is moving into the intelligence and deployment layer, as other companies move into the hardware layer (spinning up their own custom silicon).

A vibrant competitive landscape means a thriving ecosystem for end users. Game on!

You can learn more about how the AI stack is evolving by reading our most popular Deep Dive.

2) Uber, Waymo, and Tesla Race for Robotaxis

On September 2, Uber cut 3,300 jobs, about 10% of its staff, its biggest reduction since 2020.

Internally, they saw too much friction and time spent on aligning or debating across the company, instead of building, shipping, or serving customers. To fix this, the company eliminated middle-management layers and consolidated small teams, cutting micro-teams (1–2 direct reports) by nearly 50%. By removing intermediate management tiers, Uber brought teams closer to executive leadership and reduced the number of employees layered 7+ levels below the CEO by 20%.

In 2020, Uber pivoted from developing autonomous driving hardware in-house to becoming an asset-light marketplace for the entire autonomous vehicle industry. Uber acts as the digital layer with their app, and has invested in charging stations and maintenance depots. They aim to be the layer that connects robotaxis to everyday demand by partnering with or investing in over two dozen leaders across the supply chain. This includes providers like Waymo and Nuro, as well as vehicle manufacturers like Rivian and Lucid.

On September 1, Waymo opened paid rides to the public in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa, bringing it to 14 cities in total, and running more than 500,000 rides a week. This is double what it was in April, with a fleet of over 4,000 cars and a target of a million weekly rides by December.

Two days later, Tesla had a launch event and ramped up the number of driverless Cybercabs on public streets in Austin. The car fully seats two, has no steering wheel or pedals, and can be hailed through its Robotaxi app. This means the Cybercab is a Level 4 autonomous vehicle because it handles all driving in specific geofenced locations without human driver intervention. The Model Y is also available in the app to transport up to four passengers. You can learn more about the Autonomous Vehicle revolution inside our Learn With Me Deep Dive here.

I am personally jumping in to be an early adopter and plan to build my own fleet!

3) A Chinese Chipmaker Raised $911M

Enflame Technology, one of China’s leading AI chipmakers, has sparked a retail frenzy for its IPO in Shanghai’s tech-heavy Star Market.

On September 2, it took orders for the listing and raised 6.12 billion yuan, about $911 million, valuing the company at nearly 61.2 billion yuan, or roughly $9 billion. Around 7 million retail investors applied, requesting orders worth 6,109x the shares available.

Founded eight years ago, Enflame is backed by Tencent, a social media and gaming giant that is the #25 largest company in the world at ~$530B mcap. Tencent owns about 20.3% of Enflame and accounted for 83.8% of that revenue, which makes one shareholder almost the entire customer base.

Enflame built its processors around AI calculations instead of starting from a graphics chip design, as Nvidia did. Enflame also built its own software, called TopsRider, so customers can run widely used tools such as PyTorch and TensorFlow without Nvidia’s CUDA software. Their 4th-generation chip, L600, released in 2025, has 144 gigabytes of memory and can read that memory at 3.6 terabytes per second. In comparison, Rubin, the latest chip from Nvidia, has 288 gigabytes and reads at up to 22 terabytes per second.

Enflame is the last of China’s “four little GPU dragons” to reach the public market. The other three, Moore Threads Technology, MetaX Integrated Circuits, and Shanghai Biren Technology have ‌already sold ⁠shares publicly over the last year. China’s limited access to Nvidia’s most advanced chips has created demand for domestic suppliers.

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