Nvidia will pay $6 billion for a non-exclusive license to Poolside’s AI model-development platform, Model Factory, and invest an additional $1 billion at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, in a deal that underscores the chipmaker’s push into AI software.
The agreement, first reported by The Information, also includes job offers to 109 Poolside employees. Poolside’s three co-founders will remain with the company. Nvidia characterized the deal as a licensing arrangement, not an acquisition or acquihire.
Poolside’s Open-Weight Laguna Models Drew Nvidia’s Interest
Poolside developed Model Factory, the platform behind its open-weight Laguna family of coding-focused language models. In a letter to investors, Poolside acknowledged that competing independently in open-source model development would have required access to more Nvidia hardware than the company could obtain under current supply constraints.
The deal gives Nvidia access to Poolside’s model-optimization infrastructure while keeping Poolside’s business independent. Nvidia has become a major developer of open-source AI models in recent years, and Model Factory fills a gap in its tooling for training and fine-tuning large language models at scale.
Part of a Broader Nvidia Software Build-Out
The Poolside investment fits a pattern of Nvidia acquiring AI software capabilities alongside its hardware dominance. In December 2025, the company licensed inference technology from Groq and hired its founder. It also purchased SchedMD for its Slurm workload-management system. In June, Nvidia acquired predictive AI startup Kumo for $400 million.
These moves reflect a strategic shift: Nvidia is no longer content to sell only chips. By building a full-stack AI development ecosystem encompassing hardware, software, and talent, the company aims to ensure developers stay on Nvidia’s platform from model training through deployment.
The deal also highlights a growing tension in the AI industry. As model development costs climb, smaller labs with promising technology increasingly accept licensing arrangements with larger players rather than competing head-on for compute resources. Nvidia’s financial firepower gives it a unique ability to partner with and absorb the best software companies without full acquisitions.
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