24 August 2026
Nvidia licenses Poolside AI technology for $6 billion
First reported
AI Breakfast, TLDR AI and 2 others ran this on , all on the same day.
- Nvidia is paying $6 billion to license model-development technology from Poolside, a startup that builds open-weight models, which means freely available AI systems anyone can download and modify.
- Nvidia is also investing $1 billion in Poolside at a $12 billion valuation and absorbing over 100 of its engineers into Nvidia's Nemotron team, which develops AI models.
- The deal aims to create US-made open-source AI models to compete with Chinese AI systems like DeepSeek that have recently gained attention.
Where they differ
TLDR AI, The Neuron, and The Rundown AI all reported the Poolside licensing and investment figures consistently. AI Breakfast covered a different set of Nvidia investments entirely, focusing on Cloverleaf Infrastructure, SB Energy, and Perplexity instead of Poolside.
Nvidia is deploying $6 billion to license Poolside's technology and investing an additional $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation, absorbing over 100 engineers to develop open-weight models competitive with Chinese releases like DeepSeek.
Nvidia took a minority stake in data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure worth potentially several hundred million dollars and committed $1.5 billion to SB Energy's Ohio project. Nvidia is also considering a multibillion-dollar investment in Perplexity at above $30 billion valuation.
Nvidia is spending 6 billion dollars to license technology from AI startup Poolside and investing another 1 billion at a 12 billion dollar valuation, aiming to build a US-made open-source AI model to compete with Chinese alternatives. Nvidia is also raising prices on its next generation Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips by 15-17 percent starting early next year.
Nvidia struck a $6 billion deal to license model-development technology from Poolside and bring over 100 engineers onto its Nemotron team to build powerful open-weight models.