NVIDIA Acquires Poolside's AI Tech for $6 Billion in Shocking Strategy Shift

Nvidia has agreed to pay $6 billion to license Poolside's "Model Factory" technology, the core software system behind the startup's Laguna family of open-weight coding models, according to Bloomberg News and confirmed by The Wall Street Journal. The chipmaker will also invest $1 billion in Poolside at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, bringing the total commitment to $7 billion. More than 100 Poolside engineers have received job offers to join Nvidia's Nemotron open-source model project, which is developing models reportedly reaching a trillion parameters. The transaction is structured as a licensing agreement rather than an acquisition, with Poolside's three co-founders remaining to lead the company independently. Existing investors, including Bain Capital Ventures and eBay, will receive dividends from the licensing proceeds by the end of 2027. The move positions Nvidia to compete directly with Chinese open-weight models like DeepSeek and Kimi K3, as well as U.S. frontier labs OpenAI and Anthropic. CEO Jensen Huang publicly endorsed open-source models in late July, paving the way for this strategic push. Nvidia's earnings call is scheduled for August 26.