Nvidia’s AI Empire: Exploring Its Leading Startup Investments
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Amelia Cross
- January 11, 2025
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Nvidia’s Expanding AI Empire: A Deep Dive into Its Startup Investments
No company has leveraged the AI revolution more effectively than Nvidia. Since the introduction of ChatGPT over two years ago, Nvidia’s revenue, profitability, and stock price have soared, fueling a surge in its venture investments, particularly in AI startups.
Nvidia’s Rapid Investment Growth
In 2024, Nvidia participated in 49 funding rounds for AI startups, up from 34 in 2023 and significantly higher than its combined 38 AI deals in the previous four years. These investments, excluding those by its corporate VC arm, NVentures (which also scaled up to 24 deals in 2024 from just 2 in 2022), aim to grow the AI ecosystem by supporting “game changers and market makers.”
Comparatively, Nvidia’s activity outpaced other tech giants, with Alphabet completing 73 AI investments and Microsoft 40 over the same two years.
Highlighted Investments: $100M+ Deals
The Billion-Dollar Club
- OpenAI: Nvidia invested $100M in OpenAI’s $6.6B round in October 2023, which valued the company at $157B.
- xAI: Participated in Elon Musk’s $6B funding round for xAI, despite prior support for OpenAI.
- Inflection AI: Co-led a $1.3B round for Inflection in June 2023, later followed by a partial acquisition of its team by Microsoft.
- Wayve: Invested in a $1.05B round for the U.K.-based autonomous driving startup.
- Scale AI: Joined a $1B round for Scale AI in May 2024, valuing the company at $14B.
Hundreds-of-Millions Club
- Crusoe: Contributed to a $686M funding round for data centers supporting major tech players.
- Figure AI: Invested $675M in the AI robotics startup’s Series B, valuing it at $2.6B.
- Mistral AI: Reinvested in Mistral’s $640M Series B for large language model development.
- Cohere: Backed a $500M round for this enterprise-focused LLM provider.
- Perplexity: Participated in its $500M funding round, valuing the AI search startup at $9B.
- CoreWeave: Supported CoreWeave’s $221M raise in 2023; the company is now eyeing a $35B IPO.
- Sakana AI: Invested $214M in the Japanese generative AI startup.
- Imbue: Contributed to a $200M round for this AI research lab focused on reasoning and coding.
- Waabi: Joined a $200M Series B for the autonomous trucking startup.
Other Notable Deals
- Ayar Labs: $155M round for optical interconnects improving AI efficiency.
- Kore.ai: $150M funding for enterprise AI chatbot development.
- Weka: $140M Series C for AI-native data management.
- Runway: $141M Series C extension for generative AI tools for content creators.
- Bright Machines: $126M for smart robotics and AI-driven software.
- Enfabrica: $125M Series B for networking chip design.
Nvidia’s Vision
Nvidia’s investments signal a shift toward diversifying AI applications beyond centralized data centers. CEO Jensen Huang has emphasized enabling real-world AI use cases, from autonomous driving to enterprise solutions. As Nvidia builds its ecosystem, its influence on the AI landscape continues to grow, redefining how startups shape the future of AI.
