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Publication Date: 2026-10-15 15:00:00
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Three new Nvidia open models strive for efficiency and speed.
- Open models are having a renaissance on the heels of the Hugging Face hack.
- US labs are catching up in the open model race.
China-based AI labs have had the upper hand on competitive open-weight AI models over the last few years, but a recent surge in Western-made open models is challenging that.
Also: Open weights vs. closed: An AI civil war’s afoot
Nvidia’s new model, the open-weight Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, aims to be the latest data point in that surge. The 120-billion-parameter model, available today, targets the industry’s increasing focus on agentic work by delivering “the fastest task completion and highest accuracy for specialized, always-on agents,” according to Nvidia.
“As the fastest open agentic model in its class — 5x faster than the next best — it helps enterprise agents complete high-volume tasks faster across workflows that span days or weeks,” Nvidia said in the release. That’s based on Artificial Analysis’ benchmark testing of the model against its similarly sized competitors; InclusionAI’s Ling 3.0 Flash and DeepSeek’s V4.1 Flash came in second and third, respectively, but with significant distance between them and Super VL.
Nvidia also said Super VL achieves top-tier accuracy for specialized agents with post-training. The company cited how far post-training a base version of the model could take…
