# Nvidia is acquiring Poolside's "Model Factory" and 109 employees for $6 billion > Source: > Published: 2026-08-21 08:27:23+00:00 # Nvidia is acquiring Poolside's "Model Factory" and 109 employees for $6 billion **Nvidia is paying $6 billion for software that builds AI models from the startup Poolside, and it wants to bring on 109 employees.** That's according to an investor letter first reported by [Newcomer](https://www.newcomer.co/p/sources-poolside-strikes-6-billion). The employees worked on the [Laguna](https://the-decoder.com/poolsides-laguna-s-2-1-is-a-small-open-weight-coding-model-that-punches-well-above-its-size/) model and are getting job offers from Nvidia. Nvidia is licensing the "Model Factory," the system Poolside used to build its model. Nvidia builds its own [open AI models in the Nemotron line](https://the-decoder.com/nvidias-nemotron-4-aims-for-one-trillion-parameters-a-scale-chinese-labs-already-surpassed/), which puts it in competition with some of its own customers. On top of that, Nvidia is investing $1 billion at a $12 billion pre-money valuation. The three founders are staying on. The deal is "not an acquisition and it is not an acquihire," the letter says. An acquihire is a purchase driven mainly by the talent. These deals have become a go-to move for big tech companies looking to lock in technology, know-how, and staff without buying a company outright and triggering the regulatory reviews that can follow. Nvidia struck similar deals with [Groq](https://the-decoder.com/nvidias-20-billion-groq-deal-sure-looks-like-an-acquisition-as-90-percent-of-staff-moves-over/) ($20 billion) and [Enfabrica](https://the-decoder.com/nvidia-makes-900-million-acquihire-style-deal-with-ai-hardware-startup-enfabrica/) ($900 million). Poolside plans to distribute the $6 billion to its investors by the end of next year. ``` AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now ``` [Newcomer](https://www.newcomer.co/p/sources-poolside-strikes-6-billion)