The Wire — Friday, August 21
It's Friday, August 21st. Three stories. Nvidia writes a six billion dollar check for Poolside's technology, and does not buy the company. Nevada opens Las Vegas to five thousand robotaxis. And New York takes the tech jobs crown from the Bay Area. This is The Wire.
Nvidia buys the factory, not the company
The top story. Nvidia is paying Poolside, the coding model startup, for the machine that builds its models, and leaving the company on the table. Six billion dollars for a non exclusive license to Poolside's Model Factory, the system behind its Laguna coding models. On top of that, a one billion dollar investment that values Poolside at thirteen billion post money. And job offers to one hundred nine of the people who built it. One caveat. This comes from a letter to Poolside's investors, first reported by Newcomer. Nvidia has not commented publicly.
The non-acquisition
Why this matters. It is the deal shape big tech keeps reaching for this year. License the technology, non exclusively, so the startup keeps operating. Hire the team you actually want. One hundred nine offers here, though the three co founders stay put. And pay the investors. The six billion dollar fee reportedly flows through to Poolside's backers by the end of 2027. Everyone gets paid, and there is no merger to review.
The Tape
The tape. Six billion for the Poolside license. Thirteen billion, Poolside's new valuation. One billion downloads for Google's Gemma models. Five thousand, the new robotaxi ceiling in Las Vegas. And twenty million dollars of fresh seed money we will get to in a moment.
Las Vegas opens to 5,000 robotaxis
Around the industry. Nevada's Transportation Authority voted unanimously on Thursday to let Tesla, Waymo, and Uber run paid robotaxi service in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. Tesla can put up to five thousand cars on the road over the next year. Waymo, up to one thousand. For scale, a month ago Tesla's interim permit allowed exactly ten cars.
Gemma passes a billion downloads
Open models. Google's Gemma family has passed one billion downloads, about two years after launch, and the community has published more than one hundred thousand variants of it. Google DeepMind announced the milestone on Thursday, with one detail worth keeping. Teams at NASA and Starcloud are running Gemma on satellites. The open model is literally in orbit.
New York takes the tech-jobs crown
And the talent map moved. CBRE's tech talent report puts New York at three hundred ninety four thousand tech jobs, ahead of the Bay Area's three hundred seventy five thousand. That is the first lead change in the thirteen years CBRE has run the numbers. The engine is AI hiring. AI roles are now about a third of American tech listings, up forty five percent in a year.
One to Watch — Twin1
One to watch before you go. Twin1 came out of stealth Thursday with a twenty million dollar seed round co led by Bessemer, Tribeca, and Aramco Ventures. The founders built Eigen, the document AI company. The pitch is a digital twin of a knowledge worker, a persistent model of your judgment and your context, and it is already inside law firms Linklaters, Orrick, and Dechert. The company says its twins handle thirty to fifty percent of a professional's communications work. Their number, not ours. File the name away.
Sources
Sources for everything you just heard are on screen, and the one story built on a private letter is labeled that way. That is The Wire for this week. Back Monday morning.
