Nvidia has struck a non-exclusive $6 billion licensing deal with AI startup Poolside and made a $1 billion investment in the company at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, according to a letter to investors obtained by Newcomer1,4.
The deal will see 109 Poolside staffers receive job offers from Nvidia6. Those employees will join Nvidia's Nemotron team, contributing to the chipmaker's AI platform development2. The arrangement has been described as a "reverse execuhire" — a structure in which the employees depart while the founders remain with the original company, the inverse of recent deals in which executives left startups while rank-and-file stayed behind.
The scale of the staff transfer is notable given Poolside's size. In a recent podcast appearance, Poolside CEO Eiso Kant said fewer than 70 people built the company's model and fewer than 115 comprised the combined engineering and research team. ANALYSIS The departure of 109 staffers from a team of that size represents the overwhelming majority of Poolside's technical workforce moving to Nvidia.
Nvidia plans to use the $6 billion licensing arrangement to build an open-weight AI model intended to compete with Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Kimi, according to the Wall Street Journal3. The agreement aims to build an open AI ecosystem in the U.S. to compete with both Chinese heavyweights and American AI giants.
Poolside's founders have stated the arrangement is not an acquisition and not an acquihire. The $1 billion investment at a $12 billion pre-money valuation funds the remaining company, which the founders will continue to operate. The licensing deal is non-exclusive, meaning Poolside retains the right to license its technology to other parties.
ANALYSIS The deal structure is distinctive: Nvidia gains both a large technical team and a multi-billion-dollar technology license while Poolside's founders retain corporate independence and a substantial valuation. The non-exclusive licensing terms preserve Poolside's ability to monetize its technology beyond Nvidia.
Nvidia's stated intent to build an open-weight model positions the company as a direct competitor in the foundation-model layer — a market currently dominated by closed-model providers and a growing set of open-weight releases from Chinese labs. The Poolside deal gives Nvidia both the personnel and the underlying technology to pursue that objective.
Bloomberg separately confirmed the $6 billion licensing payment and the plan to tap Poolside's staff5. StartupHub.ai reported the deal on August 23, characterizing it as Nvidia acquiring Poolside for $1 billion and licensing its technology for an additional $6 billion. Newcomer's exclusive report, co-bylined by Eric Newcomer and Tom Dotan, was published on August 20.