Nvidia Pays $6 Billion to License Poolside AI Model-Development Software

Nvidia will pay $6 billion to license Poolside’s artificial intelligence model-development software, Model Factory, and will make offers to hire 109 Poolside employees who were involved in making the company’s AI open-source model, Laguna, The Information reported Thursday (Aug. 21), citing a paywalled post by Newcomer.

The Newcomer post is based on a Poolside letter to investors, according to the report.

Nvidia will also invest $1 billion in Poolside at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, and Poolside’s three co-founders will remain with the company. The letter said the deal is not an acquisition or an acquihire (a deal primarily involving talent), per the report.

The report said that Nvidia has become a major developer of open-source models. It also said that Poolside said in its letter to investors that on its own, Poolside would have needed more access to more Nvidia hardware than was possible if it were to continue competing in the development of open-source models.

Neither Nvidia nor Poolside immediately replied to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

In another, separate move, Nvidia said in December 2025 that it acquired talent and tech Groq, a maker of custom-built inference chips. In that deal, Nvidia entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Groq’s inference technology and hired Groq’s founder, president and other members of the Groq team. Groq continued to operate as an independent company.

An Nvidia spokesperson told PYMNTS at the time: “We haven’t acquired Groq. We’ve taken a non-exclusive license to Groq’s IP and have hired engineering talent from Groq’s team to join us in our mission to provide world-leading accelerate computing technology.”

CNBC reported in September 2025 that Nvidia spent over $900 million to license the technology of AI hardware startup Enfabrica and hire the company’s CEO and other employees. Enfabrica’s technology can connect more than 100,000 GPUs and enable them to effectively serve as a single computer, according to the report.

It was reported in June that Nvidia acquired predictive AI software startup Kumo AI for $400 million.

In December 2025, Nvidia acquired SchedMD and said it would continue to distribute that company’s open-source Slurm software, which is a workload management system for high-performance computing and AI.