Nvidia Expands Open Source AI with SchedMD Acquisition and Nemotron 3 Model Release
Nvidia is making bold moves in the open source AI space, announcing both a key acquisition and a new model release this week. The semiconductor leader revealed it has acquired SchedMD, the developer behind the widely used open source workload management system, Slurm. Nvidia confirmed that Slurm will continue operating as a vendor-neutral, open source tool, vital for high-performance computing and AI applications.
SchedMD, founded in 2010 by lead Slurm developers Morris Jette and Danny Auble, has played a central role in the development of Slurm since 2002. Auble, who currently serves as SchedMD CEO, will continue to lead the company. While financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed, Nvidia emphasized the longstanding collaboration, noting that Slurm is critical infrastructure for generative AI and that it plans to invest further to “accelerate” access across different systems.
On the same day, Nvidia launched a new family of open AI models, called Nemotron 3. The company described these models as its most efficient yet for building accurate AI agents. The Nemotron 3 lineup includes Nemotron 3 Nano for targeted tasks, Nemotron 3 Super for multi-AI agent applications, and Nemotron 3 Ultra for more complex scenarios. According to CEO Jensen Huang, these models will provide developers with “transparency and efficiency” to scale agentic systems.
Nvidia’s latest moves follow a series of initiatives to strengthen its open source offerings. Just last week, the company unveiled Alpamayo-R1, an open reasoning vision-language model aimed at autonomous driving research. It also expanded resources for its open source Cosmos world models, helping developers leverage AI to build more sophisticated physical applications.
These developments highlight Nvidia’s strategic bet on physical AI as the next frontier. By combining high-performance GPUs with open AI and developer-friendly tools, Nvidia aims to become the leading supplier for robotics and self-driving vehicle companies, providing the AI “brains” behind the next generation of intelligent machines.
source: Techcrunch