Nvidia building 1-trillion-parameter Nemotron 4 to rival open AI models, The Information reports

Aug. 11 (Reuters) - Nvidia NVDA.O is developing a new AI model family, Nemotron 4, with the goal of challenging top open-source models globally, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing people who work on the project.

The chip giant is among the few major U.S. firms to release open-source models, which have drawn more attention this year as AI bills balloon and cheap Chinese models near the capabilities of top systems from leading American labs Anthropic and OpenAI.

A spate of recently disclosed hacks involving autonomous AI agents has added to the attention, especially because open models do not have curbs on cybersecurity use.

Nvidia pointed to previous remarks that it was working on Nemotron 4 but did not confirm the details in The Information's report.

"Nvidia is investing in Nemotron because we believe every company and every country needs accessible frontier open models to strengthen safety and security, accelerate innovation, and provide a foundation they can rely on from one generation to the next," Kari Briski, vice president of generative AI, said in an emailed statement.

The chip giant formed a coalition last month with other companies to develop and share tools for AI safety and cybersecurity. It also signed an open letter with tech heavyweights such as Microsoft MSFT.O backing open-weight models so that innovation does not drift overseas.

Separately on Tuesday, the chip firm unveiled Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, an addition to its offerings aimed at code review, tool use, security alert monitoring, answering billing questions and other tasks.

It also released NeMo Switchyard, an open-source model-routing library designed to automatically direct AI tasks to the most suitable models.