NVIDIA shares edged higher in Friday premarket trading as the company expanded its open-source AI push with Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, a lightweight model designed to run on a single GPU in a PC, alongside NeMo Switchyard software that routes tasks to the cheapest and most suitable model. The release is NVIDIA’s first open-source model since Jensen Huang joined other technology leaders in urging U.S. policymakers to avoid "premature restrictions" on open models. Huang has argued that free or open AI models can widen adoption, lower costs and ultimately boost demand for GPUs, the processors that power AI workloads. NVIDIA said CrowdStrike, CodeRabbit and Harvey have already tested and customized the model, which it built for AI agents, software that can perform tasks autonomously. The launch also comes as Meta expands its own open-source AI efforts and as U.S. policymakers debate the risks of open-weight models after China’s Moonshot AI released Kimi K3. NVIDIA is due to report earnings on Aug. 26, with analysts expecting earnings of $2.07 per share on revenue of $91.82 billion.