NVIDIA has just released the first Nemotron 3.5 model: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, a
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ArtificialAnlys
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ArtificialAnlys
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Terms in this piece · Glossary
open weights — A model whose trained parameters are published for anyone to download and run — unlike API-only models you can access but never possess.
transformer — The neural network architecture behind modern AI models, built on attention — letting every word directly consider every other word in parallel.
eval — A repeatable test for AI quality — a set of tasks plus scoring — used the way software teams use test suites, because model output is too variable to judge by eyeballing.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
Why it matters
A 30B-class open model that lands near gpt-oss-120b on agentic evalA repeatable test for AI quality — a set of tasks plus scoring — used the way software teams use test suites, because model output is too variable to judge by eyeballing.Full definition → at roughly a quarter the parameters changes the cost calculus for high-volume AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → execution steps. The license is permissive enough to actually deploy.
Key quotes
“It retains the same hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture and small size from Nemotron 3 Nano, but makes substantial gains in intelligence and agentic performance.”
ArtificialAnlys
“Major intelligence jump: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 24 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a +9 point improvement over Nemotron 3 Nano (15). This puts it in line with OpenAI's gpt-oss-120b (24) and only just behind Nemotron 3 Super (26), a model ~4x its size”
ArtificialAnlys
“In pre-release testing of a DeepInfra endpoint serving the final NVFP4 weights, we measured median output speeds of nearly 670 tokens per second, much faster than those models are served in the market today”
ArtificialAnlys
“Meaningful agentic gains: the largest improvements over Nemotron 3 Nano come on agentic evaluations in GDPval-AA v2 (+334 ELO, moving past gpt-oss-120b and Nemotron 3 Super) and Terminal-Bench v2.1 (24% vs 7%).”
ArtificialAnlys
“Near-lossless NVFP4 quantization: as with prior Nemotron releases, the model ships in NVFP4 alongside BF16 weights. We measured the NVFP4 variant at 24 on the Intelligence Index and saw minimal degradation compared to the higher-precision weights”
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blogNVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and NeMo Switchyard Deliver Faster, Smarter, More Efficient Agentic AIKari Briski