# Nvidia licenses Poolside model factory for $6B, backs open-weight AI alternative

> Nvidia has agreed to pay roughly $6 billion to license Poolside's Model Factory, the startup's system for building and training AI models, and to invest another $1 billion on top. The combined deal values Poolside at about $12 billion pre-money, and more than 100 of its engineers will join Nvidia's Nemotron effort. Crucially, the license is non-exclusive, and Poolside's founders remain independent to keep pursuing their own research. The logic is strategic. Nvidia sells the chips everyone trains on, but it has leaned on outside providers for the open-weight models it ships alongside that hardware. Licensing a proven model-building pipeline lets it develop its own open-weight alternatives to systems from US and Chinese labs, reducing its dependence on others for the software layer. For Poolside, it is an unusual outcome: a large payday and a deep partnership without a full acquisition or loss of independence. The deal also underscores how the frontier is shifting from any single model to the factories that produce them, and how badly Nvidia wants to own more of that stack.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Yahoo Finance · Published Tuesday, August 25, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Nvidia has agreed to pay roughly $6 billion to license Poolside's Model Factory, the startup's system for building and training AI models, and to invest another $1 billion on top. The combined deal values Poolside at about $12 billion pre-money, and more than 100 of its engineers will join Nvidia's Nemotron effort. Crucially, the license is non-exclusive, and Poolside's founders remain independent to keep pursuing their own research. The logic is strategic. Nvidia sells the chips everyone trains on, but it has leaned on outside providers for the open-weight models it ships alongside that hardware. Licensing a proven model-building pipeline lets it develop its own open-weight alternatives to systems from US and Chinese labs, reducing its dependence on others for the software layer. For Poolside, it is an unusual outcome: a large payday and a deep partnership without a full acquisition or loss of independence. The deal also underscores how the frontier is shifting from any single model to the factories that produce them, and how badly Nvidia wants to own more of that stack.

## Source

[Read the full story at Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-pays-6-billion-license-115520933.html)

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