NVIDIA IS SPENDING $6 BILLION TO BUILD A US ALTERNATIVE TO CHINESE AI MODELS

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

Nvidia is deploying roughly $6 billion in a major strategic transaction with AI startup Poolside to develop high-performance open-weight models capable of competing directly with leading Chinese releases like DeepSeek and Kimi. Under the agreement, Nvidia is paying $6 billion to license Poolside's core technology—including its Model Factory platform—and is investing an additional $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation while absorbing over 100 of the startup's engineers. The incoming technical team will focus on expanding Nvidia's open-weight Nemotron project, strengthening Western frontier model development and ensuring competitive parity against state-backed open-source AI initiatives emerging from China.