Nvidia quietly acquihires Essential AI team, including Transformer coauthor Ashish Vaswani

The move follows a series of Nvidia talent acquisitions as the chip giant expands its AI research and software ambitions.

Nvidia has hired Ashish Vaswani, founder and CEO of Essential AI, and several others from the Essential AI team, according to a source close to the startup, who said Vaswani will be working on Nvidia’s Nemotron open-source models.

According to the source, Vaswani was struggling to raise money and said that “taking Ashish/Essential away from AMD was also a motivator.” AMD, one of Nvidia’s main chip competitors, was an early strategic investor in Essential AI and the startup has long relied on AMD GPUs.

Several Essential AI researchers have changed their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their new work at Nvidia, including Alok Tripathy and Saurabh Srivastava. Screenshots of other LinkedIn profile changes from company employees made their way to X yesterday.

Another source close to the deal said on background that he was not sure “if the deal is finally done,” but said it was an “interesting sign” that some researchers had already changed their LinkedIn profiles.