NVIDIA Open-Sources Nemotron Model and Switchyard Router

On August 11, NVIDIA released the open-source Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model and the NeMo Switchyard routing library. Lightning is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 30B total parameters and 3B active parameters, specifically designed for high-frequency execution in long-horizon agents. It supports a 1M context length, has open weights available on Hugging Face, and can be deployed on platforms like DGX Spark. NeMo Switchyard dynamically routes requests to the most suitable underlying model based on request signals, agent states, tool call results, as well as model capabilities, costs, and latency.

Confirmed

• Model Architecture: 30B total parameters, 3B active (some sources indicate 31.6B/3.6B with a hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture). It supports NVFP4 and BF16 precisions, features a 1M context length, and includes MTP, DFlash, and DSpark capabilities.
• Open Source Content: Model weights and data are fully open and free to use on Hugging Face, capable of running on a single GPU.
• Deployment Support: NVIDIA officially demonstrated deployment on DGX Spark, and the model is already live on the Baseten platform.
• Routing Library: NeMo Switchyard is an open-source library supporting dynamic routing, accompanied by an official video explanation.

Unconfirmed

• Specific performance benchmarks and comparative data (such as comparisons with gpt-oss-120b) were not provided with official sources in the materials.
• Whether the model is an update from Nemotron 3.0 Nano was only mentioned by kuchaev and has not received official confirmation.

Why It Matters

This release marks NVIDIA's significant strategic push into Agentic AI. By leveraging an efficient MoE model and an intelligent routing library, it reduces the inference costs and latency of long-horizon agents, driving AI deployments from the edge to the cloud.

2026-08-11 ~ 2026-08-11 · 27 related posts

• NVIDIA Walks Through Deploying Nemotron 3.5 Lightning on DGX Spark for Agents — NVIDIA Developer · 2026-08-11
• [source] NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Model — NVIDIAAI · 2026-08-11
• [source] NVIDIA Open-Sources NeMo Switchyard for Dynamic AI Agent Routing — Sam Witteveen · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Unveils Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, Built for Long-Running Agents — NVIDIA Developer · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: Ultra-Fast Open Model for Agents — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-08-11
• Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Tested: 670 tokens/s Speedster for Agents — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and NeMo Switchyard for Agentic AI — nordicinst · 2026-08-11
• Video: Building a Local LLM Routing Layer with NVIDIA SwitchYard — Prompt Engineering · 2026-08-11
• Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Benchmarks: 16x Throughput Scale with No Latency Hit — rhythmrg · 2026-08-11
• [source] NVIDIA Releases Nemotron-3.5-30B-A3B: An Open MoE Model — coder543 · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron Lightning: A Super Fast MoE Model for Long-Running Agents — Sam Witteveen · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Weights Now on Hugging Face — MaziyarPanahi · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 4x Faster Open Model for Agents — kuchaev · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Optimized for Agentic Execution — NVIDIAAI · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Open-Sources Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for High-Volume Agentic Execution — NVIDIAAI · 2026-08-11
• Nvidia Releases Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Open-Source Model — Polymarket · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA releases Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 30B LatentMoE, 3B active, 1M context — huggingface · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 30B Params with 3B Active, Built for Agent Execution — heyshrutimishra · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning with 1M Token Context — mervenoyann · 2026-08-11
• NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 30B MoE Built for Always-On Agents — ccerrato147 · 2026-08-11

7 near-duplicate retellings: NVIDIA Developer · MaziyarPanahi · nvidia · NVIDIAAI · baseten · kuchaev · tw_killian