Nvidia Launches Open-Weight Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Running on a Single GPU

In late July, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang voiced support for open-source AI models, and now the company has unveiled the lightweight Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model, which requires only a single GPU in a laptop or desktop PC. Enterprise customers can freely download, use, and modify the model without approval. Nvidia benefits because users still need GPU hardware, which it sells. Huang believes open models give companies control, spur competition, lower prices, and enhance cybersecurity and national sovereignty. Nvidia joined Microsoft in a consortium promoting open-source models and software in cybersecurity. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg also supported open-source models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is aimed at agentic applications and has been tested by CrowdStrike, CodeRabbit, and Harvey. It is available on Hugging Face and Nvidia's site, alongside the NeMo Switchyard utility for selecting optimal AI models. The lightweight variant was enhanced through distillation from larger Nemotron models.