❯ Nvidia Locks Up Poolside License for $6 Billion, 109 Employees Receive Job Offers at Once

LICENSE & POACHNewcomer reports Nvidia struck a $6 billion non-exclusive technology license with code-model company Poolside, invested $1 billion at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, and extended job offers to 109 Poolside employees. Poolside’s two founders stressed in an internal memo that this is not an acquisition, nor an acqui-hire, and the company remains independently run by them.

STRUCTURE REPLAYThe structure is nearly identical to the playbook Nvidia used to secure Groq’s technology license: buy the license, poach the team, keep the shell company, sidestepping the antitrust review a formal acquisition would invite. Poolside, founded in 2023 by former GitHub executives Warner and Kant, hit a setback this April — cloud-compute provider CoreWeave backed out of a 15-year anchor lease and $2 billion in financing for the 2 GW “Horizon” data-center project in West Texas, briefly stalling the project.

WHAT'S BOUGHTSpending $6 billion on a non-exclusive license alone shows Nvidia wants model capability that can go into production immediately, and the people who wrote those models — not the balance sheet. With a non-exclusive license, Poolside can in theory sell the same technology to another buyer, but the core authors have already taken their seats at Nvidia. For other model companies still raising capital, the valuation anchor has been reset: a technology license can now be priced on its own at half of a company’s valuation, while founders keep the company to pitch the next round.

▪ SIGNALA company valued at $12 billion sold its most valuable piece for $6 billion on its own — and what’s left can still raise at $12 billion.