Nvidia is paying $6 billion for the machine that builds a rival's models — and hiring 109 of the people who ran it
The AI coding startup Poolside told its investors on 20-21 August that it had signed a non-exclusive licensing deal worth $6 billion with Nvidia, covering the "Model Factory" — the internal system Poolside used to train its Laguna family of coding models. Separately Nvidia is investing $1 billion in what remains of the company at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, and has made job offers to 109 Poolside staff. The three founders are staying, and Poolside says it will distribute the $6 billion to its investors by the end of next year. The letter, obtained by Eric Newcomer, insists "this is not an acquisition and it is not an acquihire" — but fewer than 70 people built Poolside's model and roughly 115 worked across engineering and research, so most of the technical team is moving. Poolside also told investors it had a narrow window to raise $2 billion for a 40,000-chip GB300 cluster, failed to close it in time and lost the infrastructure. It is the third deal Nvidia has structured this way, after Groq at about $20 billion and Enfabrica at roughly $900 million.
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