Cadence Design Systems on Monday launched Maestro, a portfolio of AI models tuned to help design computer chips, deepening its partnership with Nvidia, Reuters reported.
The suite was built in part on Nvidia’s open-weight Nemotron model and secured with Nvidia’s OpenShell safety technology, the companies said. Cadence said customers can run the models on its own cloud or on public clouds, or keep them in-house behind their own firewalls and data centers.
What Cadence announced
In its press release, Cadence said the Maestro portfolio combines post-trained large language models, trained decision models and self-improving agent skills. The models power the company’s AI Super Agents, including AuraStack, ChipStack, InnoStack and ViraStack, which drive Cadence’s chip and system design software.
Cadence said initial results show up to 30% improvement in quality of results and up to five times greater token efficiency than a general-purpose foundation model. Customers can further post-train the models, including Nemotron, on their own data, designs and workflows, the company said.
“Our collaboration with Cadence brings NVIDIA Nemotron, OpenShell and deep engineering expertise to Maestro’s domain-specialized models,” said Tim Costa, a vice president at Nvidia, in the release.
The first Maestro models are available to select early-access customers in the fourth quarter of 2026, Cadence said.
A different path from Synopsys
Reuters reported that Cadence’s approach contrasts with that of its largest competitor, Synopsys, which said on Sept. 30 that it would develop an AI model with OpenAI and share revenue with the ChatGPT maker. That model, GPT-Synopsys, will run on OpenAI-hosted infrastructure, according to Reuters.
Paul Cunningham, a Cadence senior vice president, described Maestro to Reuters as model-agnostic, noting “there are more (AI) model providers out there than there are (chip design software) vendors.” Asked whether Cadence might strike deals with proprietary AI labs, he said open- and closed-weight approaches are being “pursued equally” and that working with commercial labs is “part of the Maestro vision,” but declined to elaborate.