Based on information from individuals with inside knowledge, NVIDIA inked a technology licensing deal worth $6 billion with AI newcomer Poolside this week. The tech giant also plans to onboard a significant number of Poolside's engineers, with the ambitious goal of constructing one of the globe's most formidable open-weight AI models. This move positions NVIDIA to go head-to-head with Chinese models like DeepSeek and Kimi K3, and could also lead to more direct competition with leading U.S. AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.