Nvidia's new Nemotron 3 Embed tops open embedding benchmark

Nvidia released Nemotron 3 Embed, an open embedding model collection with three checkpoints: an 8B, a 1B, and a quantized 1B NVFP4 variant. The 8B model ranks #1 on the RTEB retrieval benchmark at 78.46 average NDCG@10, and all three handle inputs up to 32,768 tokens.

Why it matters: The NVFP4 1B version keeps over 99% of full-precision retrieval accuracy while running up to 2x faster on Blackwell hardware, continuing Nvidia's pattern of pairing open model releases with its own chip advantages. It adds a strong open option to the embedding-model layer that underpins most retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems.