Nvidia’s $6 Billion Deal for Poolside’s Model Factory Is a Wager on Open-Source Models Driving Chip Demand

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) recently struck a $6 billion licensing agreement with AI start-up Poolside, extending job offers to more than 100 of the company’s employees in a move reported by Bloomberg on Aug. 20. The deal landed just days after a note circulated from Goldman Sachs‘ One-Delta desk argued that “useful intelligence per dollar is exploding,” making it harder for makers of large language model to defend premium pricing.

For a chief supplier of the silicon powering the AI labs, Poolside brings model-making capabilities, while the frontier labs face pressure from open-source competition. Nvidia sells compute capacity, and widely available, capable models drive broader AI adoption and usage, which fuels the heart of its business.

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »

At Vercel, a model routing platform popular with software developers, open-weight model share has gone from 33% of tokens to 54% in under two months.

The cost of intelligence is declining at all tiers

The day after the Nvidia-Poolside deal was reported, OpenAI cut the price of its frontier GPT-5.6 Sol model by more than 20%, while still offering two cheaper alternative tiers.

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