--- title: Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory... description: Nvidia is paying Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and hire 109 of its staff, plus investing $1bn in the remaining company at... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff | daily.dev og:description: Nvidia is paying Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and hire 109 of its staff, plus investing $1bn in the remaining company at... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/PKvz0Jot3.png og:image:alt: Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 5 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Nvidia is paying Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and hire 109 of its staff, plus investing $1bn in the remaining company at a $12bn pre-money valuation. Poolside's three founders stay on, and the letter to investors insists this is not an acquisition or acquihire. This is the third such deal for Nvidia, following similar structures with Groq ($20bn) and Enfabrica (~$900m), bringing Nvidia's total commitment across the three to roughly $27bn. Poolside's letter also explains it lost a 40,000 GB300 chip cluster after failing to raise $2bn in a six-week window, forcing it to abandon frontier model development. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What did Nvidia pay Poolside and what did it get in return? Nvidia agreed to pay Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and offer jobs to 109 of its staff, while separately investing $1bn in the remaining company at a $12bn pre-money valuation. Poolside's three founders are staying, and the letter to investors describes the deal as neither an acquisition nor an acquihire. Poolside plans to distribute the $6bn to investors by the end of next year. _Track how AI infrastructure deals like this reshape the model-training landscape with daily.dev._ ### Why did Poolside stop building frontier AI models? Poolside lost access to a 40,000 GPU GB300 cluster after failing to raise $2 billion in a six-week window at the end of last year to pay for it. The company's letter to investors says it had been directionally correct for three and a half years but that capital requirements for frontier models went vertical, and next year's frontier model needs far more than an order of magnitude larger cluster than the 10,000-20,000 chips it estimates would have sufficed. _Developers weighing compute constraints against model ambitions can follow deals like this on daily.dev._ ### How does Nvidia's Poolside deal compare to its previous licence-and-hire deals with Groq and Enfabrica? Nvidia paid $20bn for Groq's inference technology and top engineers in December, later joining a $350m round valuing the remaining company at $3.5bn, and struck a roughly $900m deal with hardware startup Enfabrica. All three deals, including Poolside's $6bn, used the same non-exclusive licence plus hiring structure rather than an outright purchase, bringing Nvidia's total commitment across the three to roughly $27bn. _Compare Nvidia's compute and talent deals as they unfold by following AI infrastructure news on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Nvidia is reportedly investing up to $1 billion in Poolside](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-is-reportedly-investing-up-to-1-billion-in-poolside-b4amjc1gu) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#business](https://daily.dev/tags/business), [#nvidia](https://daily.dev/tags/nvidia) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3"},"datePublished":"2026-08-21T12:10:20.715Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:19:10.846Z","description":"Nvidia is paying Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and hire 109 of its staff, plus investing $1bn in the remaining company at...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/2a01bfb64ef18923cf41bdfa6e3fe3cc?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/2a01bfb64ef18923cf41bdfa6e3fe3cc?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The Next Web","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Next Web","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tnw","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tnw"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"llm,business,nvidia","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Next Web","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tnw"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-pays-poolside-6bn-to-license-its-model-factory-and-hire-109-staff-pkvz0jot3#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What did Nvidia pay Poolside and what did it get in return?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Nvidia agreed to pay Poolside $6bn to non-exclusively license its Model Factory software and offer jobs to 109 of its staff, while separately investing $1bn in the remaining company at a $12bn pre-money valuation. Poolside's three founders are staying, and the letter to investors describes the deal as neither an acquisition nor an acquihire. Poolside plans to distribute the $6bn to investors by the end of next year. Track how AI infrastructure deals like this reshape the model-training landscape with daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Poolside stop building frontier AI models?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Poolside lost access to a 40,000 GPU GB300 cluster after failing to raise $2 billion in a six-week window at the end of last year to pay for it. The company's letter to investors says it had been directionally correct for three and a half years but that capital requirements for frontier models went vertical, and next year's frontier model needs far more than an order of magnitude larger cluster than the 10,000-20,000 chips it estimates would have sufficed. Developers weighing compute constraints against model ambitions can follow deals like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How does Nvidia's Poolside deal compare to its previous licence-and-hire deals with Groq and Enfabrica?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Nvidia paid $20bn for Groq's inference technology and top engineers in December, later joining a $350m round valuing the remaining company at $3.5bn, and struck a roughly $900m deal with hardware startup Enfabrica. All three deals, including Poolside's $6bn, used the same non-exclusive licence plus hiring structure rather than an outright purchase, bringing Nvidia's total commitment across the three to roughly $27bn. Compare Nvidia's compute and talent deals as they unfold by following AI infrastructure news on daily.dev."}}]} ```