The archive · AI & Models · Strategic decision · 2023–2026
Poolside bet AI could write code; Nvidia paid $6B for its model factory
Ex-GitHub CTO Jason Warner founded Poolside to make natural language how software gets built; Nvidia paid $6B to license its Model Factory and hired its team
Poolside
What the business is
A Paris-based AI startup building its own large language models for software development — code autocomplete, suggestions and natural-language app building — sold to Global 2000 companies and public-sector agencies
Starting capital：$126M seed (2023); $500M Series B (October 2024) for $626M total, then Nvidia's $1B investment at a $12B pre-money valuation (2026)
How it started
Jason Warner, GitHub's former CTO who had incubated Copilot, founded Poolside in May 2023 with serial entrepreneur Eiso Kant. They raised a $26M seed led by Redpoint, then a $100M extension led by Xavier Niel and Felicis in August 2023 — $126M in total — and moved the headquarters to Paris to build a foundational model that could write software from natural language.
What happened
Poolside built its own models and the Model Factory training system, shipping open-weight coding models like Laguna, with Global 2000 companies and public-sector agencies as customers. In October 2024 it raised a $500M Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures — with Nvidia, eBay, DST Global and others participating — at a $3B valuation, using the capital to bring 10,000 Nvidia GPUs online for training.
How it ended up
In August 2026 Nvidia agreed to pay $6B for a non-exclusive license to Poolside's Model Factory, invest $1B at a $12B pre-money valuation, and hire 109 employees who built the Laguna models. Poolside's three co-founders stayed and the company kept operating independently — a licensing-and-hiring deal that worked like an acquisition without the ownership.
Background
Jason Warner, GitHub's former CTO who had incubated Copilot, founded Poolside in May 2023 with serial entrepreneur Eiso Kant. They raised a $26M seed led by Redpoint, then a $100M extension led by Xavier Niel and Felicis in August 2023 — $126M in total — and moved the headquarters to Paris to build a foundational model that could write software from natural language.
Poolside built its own models and the Model Factory training system, shipping open-weight coding models like Laguna, with Global 2000 companies and public-sector agencies as customers. In October 2024 it raised a $500M Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures — with Nvidia, eBay, DST Global and others participating — at a $3B valuation, using the capital to bring 10,000 Nvidia GPUs online for training.
In August 2026 Nvidia agreed to pay $6B for a non-exclusive license to Poolside's Model Factory, invest $1B at a $12B pre-money valuation, and hire 109 employees who built the Laguna models. Poolside's three co-founders stayed and the company kept operating independently — a licensing-and-hiring deal that worked like an acquisition without the ownership.
What has to be true
- Warner had incubated GitHub Copilot, so the bet on AI-written code came from someone who had watched the idea work
- Owning the models and the training system, rather than wrapping someone else's, created a moat valuable enough for a $6B license
- Choosing Paris gave Poolside access to European AI talent and public support at a fraction of Silicon Valley's cost
- Focusing on Global 2000 enterprises turned a research bet into contracts that justified massive compute spending
What can be applied
When a startup's moat is its training system, a chip giant can license the moat and hire the team — a de facto acquisition without ownership or antitrust review.
Aftermath
As of August 2026 Poolside remained an independent company after a deal it stressed was not an acquisition: Nvidia licensed Model Factory for $6B, invested $1B at a $12B pre-money valuation, and hired 109 employees from the Laguna model team, while the three co-founders stayed. The $6B license fee was expected to flow to existing backers including Bain Capital Ventures, eBay, Citi Ventures, Redpoint and Adams Street by the end of 2027.
Sources
- US AI startup Poolside raises $126m seed round and relocates to France
- AI coding startup Poolside raises $500M from eBay, Nvidia, and others
- Nvidia Pays $6 Billion to License Poolside AI Model-Development Software
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