Nvidia Reportedly Acquiring Poolside for $7B to Boost Open Source Models
AI寒武纪 · wechat · 2026-08-23
Chinese media outlet "AI Cambrian" reports that Nvidia has finalized a massive $7 billion deal to aggressively enter the open-source large model arena.
Deal Details:
- Nvidia is investing $1 billion in AI unicorn Poolside at a $12B pre-money valuation.
- An additional $6B is paid for technology licensing.
- Over 100 core engineers from Poolside will join Nvidia, integrating into the Nemotron open-source model project led by Jensen Huang.
Strategic Motivation:
The report claims this is a counter-move by Huang against the surge of Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek. Nvidia aims to build a robust open-source ecosystem to compete with closed-source giants like OpenAI, who are secretly developing custom chips. Nvidia is currently working on a "Nemotron" ultimate version rumored to exceed 1 trillion parameters.
Background:
Poolside, founded by former GitHub CTO, reportedly missed out on a cluster of 40,000 GB300 chips due to a funding shortfall, creating an urgent need for capital and compute.
Related event: Nvidia's Reported $7B Poolside Deal Targets Top Open-Weight Model(14 posts)→
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