Nvidia pays $6B to license AI models from Poolside, invests $1B in the startup

Nvidia has agreed to pay $6 billion to license AI models from Poolside AI, the software development-focused startup that barely existed two years ago. On top of that, Nvidia is putting another $1 billion in equity into the company, setting Poolside’s pre-money valuation at $12 billion. That’s a fourfold valuation jump from the $3 billion mark Poolside hit just last year. For a company co-founded in early 2023, the trajectory looks less like a startup growth curve and more like a vertical line drawn with a ruler. What Nvidia is actually buying The $6 billion licensing deal is non-exclusive, meaning Poolside can still sell its technology to other buyers. What Nvidia gets is access to Poolside’s “Model Factory,” the startup’s platform for producing generative AI models tailored to software development. Poolside has been building out its Laguna family of models throughout 2026, including variants called Laguna XS.2 and M.1. These models are designed to write, debug, and optimize code, essentially turning AI into a software engineer’s co-pilot on steroids. The talent grab nobody’s ignoring Beyond the dollars, 109 former Poolside employees received job offers from Nvidia as part of the d...