Nvidia said on Monday it has acquired AI software company SchedMD, underscoring the chipmaker’s push into open-source technology and its broader investments in the artificial intelligence ecosystem as competition intensifies.
While Nvidia is best known for its high-performance chips, it also provides a suite of open-source AI models — ranging from physics simulations to autonomous driving — that are widely used by researchers and businesses. Its proprietary CUDA platform, a standard for most developers, remains central to the appeal of its hardware, making software a critical pillar of its leadership in AI.
Shares in Nvidia rose 1.35% following the announcement, alongside earlier news of new open-source AI models.
SchedMD develops software that manages and schedules large-scale computing workloads, which can consume substantial portions of data centre server capacity. Its core technology, Slurm, is open source and freely available, while the company generates revenue through engineering and support services.
Nvidia did not disclose financial details of the transaction and said it will continue to offer SchedMD’s software under an open-source licence. In a blog post, the company said Slurm — supported on the latest Nvidia hardware — is a key part of the infrastructure underpinning generative AI, helping developers manage training and inference workloads.
Earlier on Monday, Nvidia also introduced a new generation of open-source AI models, which it said deliver faster performance, lower costs and improved intelligence, as it responds to growing competition from Chinese open-source AI developers.
Founded in 2010 by Slurm creators Morris “Moe” Jette and Danny Auble, SchedMD is based in Livermore, California, and employs about 40 people. Its customers include cloud infrastructure provider CoreWeave and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
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