US chipmaker Nvidia is paying $6 billion to license the model-building technology of artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Poolside and hiring more than 100 of its engineers, to build an open-weight AI model able to compete with Chinese rivals such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Chinese analysts said on Monday that the move marks a shift in a US industry that long bet on closed development, and one that China welcomes.

According to sources cited by the newspaper, the deal will allow the company to use AI startup Poolside’s technologies and hire most of its engineers

Nvidia Corporation (NVDA), the world’s dominant supplier of AI chips, is making a strong push into the software that runs on them. The company a...