Just over a year after Nvidia acquired AI startup LeptonAI for a reported hundreds of millions of dollars, the company's founder and former VP of system software, Jia Yangqing, has already walked out the door. According to a report from SemiAnalysis, the split was driven by CEO Jensen Huang's dissatisfaction with the performance of the DGX Cloud Lepton project, along with disagreements over product execution and open-source commitments.
Nvidia bought LeptonAI in April 2025 and rebranded its platform as DGX Cloud Lepton that June. But the integration appears to have been rocky from the start. Sources familiar with the matter say Huang expected faster results from the cloud service, and tensions grew over how the team approached development and whether to keep the platform truly open source.
Jia, a well-known figure in the AI infrastructure world, had previously held engineering roles at AWS and Alibaba before founding LeptonAI. His departure marks one of the highest-profile exits from Nvidia's recent acquisition spree.
Neither Nvidia nor Jia have publicly commented on the exit.