Nvidia’s AI empire: A look at the best startup investments

No company has capitalized on the AI ​​revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Its revenue, profitability and cash reserves have grown rapidly since the introduction of ChatGPT a little over two years ago, and the many competitive generative AI services that have launched since then. And its stock price has increased more than eightfold.

During this time, the world’s leading high-performance GPU maker has used its ballooning fortunes to significantly increase investments in all kinds of startups, especially AI startups.

According to PitchBook data, the chip giant increased its venture capital activity by participating in 49 funding rounds for AI companies in 2024, up from 34 in 2023. This is a dramatic increase in investment compared to the previous four years, when Nvidia funded only 38 AI deals. Note that these investments exclude those made by NVentures, its official corporate VC fund, which has significantly increased its investments over the past two years. (PitchBook says NVentures did 24 deals in 2024, compared to just 2 in 2022.)

Nvidia stated The goal of its corporate investment is to expand the artificial intelligence ecosystem by backing startups it considers “game changers and market makers.”

Of course, Nvidia isn’t the only big tech corporation writing checks to AI startups. But it was the most active in the last two years. According to PitchBook data, Alphabet participated in 73 rounds and Microsoft participated in 40 rounds, compared to Nvidia’s 83 deals over two years (2023 and 2024).

Below is a list of startups that have raised rounds over $100 million in the past two years where Nvidia was a named participant.

Billion dollar club

OpenAI: Nvidia first supported ChatGPT maker in October, it was reported that a A $100 million check Towards a whopping $6.6 billion, valuing the company at $157 billion. The chipmaker’s investment was dwarfed by other OpenAI backers, notably Thrive, which invested $1.3 billion, according to the New York Times.

xAI: Nvidia participated in Elon Musk’s xAI’s $6 billion round. The deal revealed that OpenAI doesn’t have all its investors complied with his request refraining from supporting any of his direct rivals. Nvidia joined xAI’s cap chart after investing in developer ChatGPT in October a few months later.

Bending: One of Nvidia’s first significant AI investments also had one of the most unusual results. In June 2023, Nvidia was one of several lead investors in Inflection 1.3 billion dollars round is a company founded by Mustafa Suleiman, who previously founded DeepMind. In less than a year, Microsoft hired the founders of Inflection AI. It pays $620 million for a non-exclusive technology license, leaving the company with a significantly reduced workforce and a less defined future.

Wave: In May, Nvidia attended an event $1.05 billion round for a UK-based startup developing a self-learning system for autonomous driving. The company is testing its cars in the UK and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Safe Super Intelligence: In September, Nvidia was a backer of a new startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The $1 billion round it is reported that he is evaluating the new one For 10 people A $5 billion AI lab.

AI scales: In May 2024, Nvidia joined Accel and other tech giants to invest in Amazon and Meta 1 billion dollars At Scale AI, it provides data labeling services to companies to train AI models. The round valued the San Francisco-based company at about $14 billion.

A multi-hundred million dollar club

Crusoe: Home building data centers reported It will be leased to Oracle, Microsoft and OpenAI collected 686 million dollars In late November, according to an SEC filing. The investment was led by Founders Fund, and a long list of other investors included Nvidia.

Image AI: In February, Artificial intelligence robotics startup Figur has been raised 675 million dollars Series B from Nvidia, OpenAI Startup Fund, Microsoft and others. The round valued the company at $2.6 billion.

Mistral AI: Nvidia invested in Mistral for the second time, when the French-born large language model developer raised a $640 million Series B round. worth 6 billion dollars in June.

Related: In June, Nvidia invested in Cohere’s 500 million dollar turnovera large language model provider serving enterprises. The chipmaker first backed the Toronto-based startup a year ago.

Confusion: Nvidia first invested in Perplexity in November 2023 and has been involved in every subsequent round of the AI ​​search engine startup. 500 million dollars round that valued the company at $9 billion in December, according to PitchBook data.

Poolside: in October, AI coding assistant startup Poolside has announced it has raised 500 million dollars Managed by Bain Capital Ventures. Nvidia participated in a round that valued the artificial intelligence startup at $3 billion.

CoreWeave: Nvidia invested in the AI ​​cloud computing provider in April 2023, when it launched CoreWeave. 221 million dollars in funding. Since then, CoreWeave’s value has grown to nearly $2 billion 19 billion dollarsand reportedly the company’s eyes a $35 billion IPO this year. CoreWeave allows its customers to rent Nvidia GPUs on an hourly basis.

AI section: In September, Nvidia invested the A Japan-based startup that trains low-cost generative artificial intelligence models using small datasets. The start has risen massively Series A is about $214 million It is valued at 1.5 billion dollars.

Imbue: AI research lab that claims to be developing AI systems that can reason and code 200 million dollar turnover In September 2023, from investors including Nvidia, the Astera Institute and former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.

Reference: In June, autonomous trucking startup a $200 million Series B The round is co-led by existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures. Other investors include Nvidia, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.

Deals over $100 million

Setting up laboratories: In December, Nvidia invested $155 million turnover Ayar Labs, a the company develops optical interconnects to improve artificial intelligence computing and energy efficiency. This was Nvidia’s third time backing the startup.

Korea.ai: A startup developing enterprise-oriented AI chatbots has risen 150 million dollars In December 2023. In addition to Nvidia, investors participating in the financing include FTV Capital, Vistara Growth and Sweetwater Private Equity.

Weka: In May, Nvidia invested 140 million dollars Round for Weka, an AI-native data management platform. The round valued the Silicon Valley company at $1.6 billion.

Runway: In June 2023, Runway, a startup building generative artificial intelligence tools for multimedia content creators, $141 million Series C Expanding investors including Nvidia, Google and Salesforce.

Shiny cars: In June 2024, Nvidia a $126 million Series C Bright Machines, a smart robotics and AI-driven software startup.

Detailed information: The startup, which provides storage solutions for artificial intelligence and data analytics, raised a $118 million Series E in December 2023, valued at $9.3 billion. This was Nvidia’s third investment in Vast Data.

Factory: In September 2023, Nvidia invested in network chip designer Enfabrica. $125 million Series B. Although the startup raised another $115 million in November, Nvidia did not participate in the round.