Nvidia will pay US$6B for Poolside’s Model Factory licence and hire 109 core engineers to supercharge its open-weight Nemotron development.
On 20 August 2026, Nvidia announced to acquire a non-exclusive software licence for Poolside’s Model Factory and hire 109 key staff to strengthen its open-weight Nemotron project. The transaction between the GPU giant and Poolside is structured as a US$7 billion strategic partnership and technology licensing agreement rather than a traditional corporate acquisition.
Nvidia paid US$6 billion for a non-exclusive software licence to Poolside’s “Model Factory” platform, whilst making an additional US$1 billion equity investment into Poolside at a US$12 billion pre-money valuation. Nvidia licensed Poolside’s Model Factory, the underlying software infrastructure and automation system used to develop and train models. Over 100 Poolside engineers and researchers (109 employees total) received offers to join the company to work on its open-weight Nemotron model initiative.
Poolside’s three co-founders, including CEO Eiso Kant and co-founder Jason Warner, are not joining Nvidia; they will continue leading Poolside as an independent company focused on separate research initiatives. The licence granted to the company is non-exclusive, leaving Poolside free to licence its Model Factory technology to other third parties.
A shareholder letter revealed that Poolside faced capital and hardware constraints after missing a window to secure a 40,000-chip cluster, leading them to partner with Nvidia rather than attempting to compete independently at the extreme frontier of AI training. The structure follows a pattern the company previously used with Groq and Enfabrica, acquiring IP rights and hiring key technical staff without executing an outright merger that could trigger lengthy antitrust reviews.
