Nvidia takes a new step in open artificial intelligence with Nemotron 3 Ultra, its most powerful model to date. Presented at Computex 2026 in Taipei, this system impresses with its speed and reasoning capabilities. Yet, despite this major breakthrough, Chinese laboratories continue to dominate the global open source AI rankings. Can Nvidia really catch up?
In brief
- Nvidia has unveiled Nemotron 3 Ultra, its most advanced open source AI model to date.
- The model performs better than any American open-weight competitor.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra generates more than 300 tokens per second, several times faster than its Chinese rivals.
Nvidia signs a major breakthrough in open source AI
On June 1, in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presented Nemotron 3 Ultra at the Computex trade show. With its 550 billion parameters, it is the largest open-weight model ever developed by the American company. This announcement also marks an important milestone for the open AI ecosystem in the United States.
In reality, only 55 billion parameters are activated simultaneously thanks to a so-called “Mixture of Experts” architecture. This approach allows the model to mobilize only the resources necessary for each task. The result: faster execution and significantly reduced operating costs.
According to Nvidia, Nemotron 3 Ultra delivers up to five times the inference speed of some competing models while reducing costs by approximately 30%. For companies developing autonomous agents or complex applications, this advantage could translate into significant productivity gains.
Independent evaluations carried out by Artificial Analysis reinforce this impression. The model scores 48 on its intelligence indexwhich notably measures the reasoning and programming skills, general knowledge and performance of AI agents. This result places Nemotron 3 Ultra well ahead of other open American models, including those developed by Google or OpenAI.
This progression is all the more remarkable given that its predecessor, Nemotron 3 Super, launched a few months earlier, had a score lower by 12 points. In a sector where each point gained becomes more and more difficult to obtain, this improvement represents a real technological leap.
China maintains its lead in the open source race
Despite this progress, Nvidia has not yet managed to dethrone the Chinese leaders. The main obstacle has a name: Kimi K2.6, developed by Moonshot AI.
With a score of 54 on the Artificial Analysis index, Kimi K2.6 maintains a significant lead over Nemotron 3 Ultra. Even more impressive, the Chinese model is among the most efficient AI systems in the world, all categories combined, whether open or proprietary.
This domination is not the result of chance. For several years, Chinese laboratories have been increasing the number of publications of high-level open source models. Conversely, American giants like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google generally reserve their most advanced technologies for proprietary services accessible via API.
This strategy has profoundly changed the market balance. By the end of 2024, Chinese models accounted for a marginal share of global open source AI use. A year later, their share was already approaching 30%, illustrating the speed of their rise.
Aware of this strategic issue, Nvidia is investing massively in open AI. The group has already announced a five-year, $26 billion development plan and is now working on Nemotron 4. This new generation will be developed with several major partners, including Mistral AI and Perplexity, within the Nemotron Coalition.
Nemotron 3 Ultra confirms that Nvidia is now the most ambitious American player in open source AI. Its lead in speed and efficiency could appeal to many companies.
However, the global battle for open AI is no longer being played out only between American giants. Today, China is imposing its pace of innovation and forcing Western players to accelerate their efforts. For Nvidia, Nemotron 3 Ultra represents a major step forward, but probably only a step in a technological competition that is only just beginning.
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