No company has leveraged the AI boom more effectively than Nvidia. Since the emergence of ChatGPT over two years ago, the world’s leading high-performance GPU maker has seen its revenue, profits, and stock price skyrocket. With this surge in financial strength, Nvidia has aggressively expanded its investments in AI startups, solidifying its position as a dominant force in the AI industry.
Nvidia’s Growing Influence in the AI Startup Ecosystem
In 2024 alone, Nvidia participated in 49 funding rounds for AI companies, a sharp increase from 34 in 2023, according to PitchBook data. This marks a dramatic shift compared to the previous four years combined, when the company funded only 38 AI deals. Additionally, its corporate venture capital arm, NVentures, has significantly ramped up activity, engaging in 24 deals in 2024 compared to just two in 2022.
As of early 2025, Nvidia has already participated in seven more funding rounds, reinforcing its commitment to shaping the future of AI. The company has made it clear that its investment strategy focuses on backing startups that it considers “game changers and market makers.”
Nvidia’s Billion-Dollar AI Investments
Among its most significant investments, Nvidia has played a role in some of the largest funding rounds in AI history. The company contributed $100 million to OpenAI‘s massive $6.6 billion round, which valued the ChatGPT maker at $157 billion. Despite its contribution, Nvidia’s investment was overshadowed by firms like Thrive Capital, which invested $1.3 billion in the same round.
Additionally, Nvidia backed Elon Musk’s xAI during its $6 billion funding round, a move that highlighted the competitive nature of AI investments. Despite previously investing in OpenAI, Nvidia demonstrated its neutrality by also supporting a rival AI model developer.
The company was also a major player in the $1.3 billion funding round for Inflection AI, a startup founded by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind. However, this investment took an unexpected turn when Microsoft acquired Inflection AI’s key talent and technology for $620 million, leaving the company with an uncertain future.
Another billion-dollar investment came with Wayve, a U.K.-based startup developing self-learning AI systems for autonomous driving. Nvidia participated in Wayve’s $1.05 billion funding round, which aims to accelerate AI-powered driving solutions in the U.K. and San Francisco Bay Area.
Hundreds of Millions Invested in AI Powerhouses
Beyond billion-dollar investments, Nvidia has also played a key role in funding AI startups that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2024, Scale AI, a leading data-labeling platform for AI training, secured $1 billion in funding, with Nvidia participating alongside Amazon, Meta, and Accel. This round valued the company at nearly $14 billion, highlighting the growing demand for AI-driven data solutions.
Meanwhile, Crusoe, a startup building data centers leased to OpenAI, Microsoft, and Oracle, raised $686 million in November. Figure AI, an AI-powered robotics startup, secured $675 million in early 2024 from investors including Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
Nvidia also reinforced its commitment to French AI company Mistral, which specializes in large language model (LLM) development. The company participated in Mistral’s $640 million Series B round, pushing its valuation to $6 billion.
Strategic AI Investments Shaping the Future
Nvidia’s influence extends beyond AI software and into AI infrastructure. The company has invested heavily in cloud AI computing providers like CoreWeave, which allows businesses to rent Nvidia GPUs on an hourly basis. In April 2023, CoreWeave raised $221 million, and since then, its valuation has skyrocketed from $2 billion to $19 billion, with an IPO now on the horizon.
Other notable investments include Lambda, an AI cloud services provider, which secured $480 million, and Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine that raised $500 million in late 2023, valuing it at $9 billion.
The Road Ahead: Nvidia’s Continued Expansion in AI Investments
With the AI revolution still unfolding, Nvidia shows no signs of slowing down. Its strategic investments in AI startups, cloud computing, robotics, and autonomous driving position it at the center of the rapidly evolving AI landscape. As generative AI, machine learning, and cloud-based computing continue to expand, Nvidia is set to remain a dominant player in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
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