No company has leveraged the AI revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Since the introduction of ChatGPT a little more than two years ago, and the many competitive generative AI services launched since then, the company’s revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have skyrocketed. And the stock price soared more than eight times.
During this period, the world’s leading high-performance GPU manufacturers have used their ballooning wealth to significantly increase investments in startups of all kinds, especially AI startups.
The semiconductor giant ramped up its venture capital activity in 2024, participating in 49 funding rounds for AI companies, up from 34 in 2023, according to PitchBook data. This is a dramatic jump in investment compared to the past four years, when Nvidia only funded 38 AI deals. Note that these investments do not include investments by NVentures, the company’s official corporate VC fund. NVentures has also significantly increased its investments over the past two years. (PitchBook says NVentures made 24 deals in 2024, compared to just two in 2022.)
Nvidia says its goal with the corporate investment is to expand the AI ecosystem by supporting startups that the company considers “game changers and market makers.”
Of course, Nvidia isn’t the only big tech company writing checks to AI startups. But it has been the most active in the past two years. PitchBook data shows that over two years (2023 and 2024) Nvidia made 83 deals, while Alphabet participated in 73 and Microsoft made 40 rounds. are.
Below is a list of startups where Nvidia has raised rounds of over $100 million over the past two years as a designated participant. The amount raised in the round is sorted from highest to lowest.
Billion dollar club
OpenAI: Nvidia first backed the ChatGPT maker in October, reportedly writing a $100 million check toward a massive $6.6 billion round that valued the company at $157 billion. The chipmaker’s investment dwarfed OpenAI’s other backers, particularly 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 all of OpenAI’s investors failed to comply with the company’s request to refrain from supporting direct competitors. After investing in the ChatGPT maker in October, Nvidia joined xAI’s cap table a few months later.
Change: One of Nvidia’s first major AI investments also yielded one of its most unusual results. In June 2023, NVIDIA was one of several lead investors in a $1.3 billion round for Inflexion, a company founded by Mustafa Suleiman, who previously founded DeepMind. Less than a year later, Microsoft hired the founders of Inflection AI, paid $620 million for a non-exclusive technology license, and left a company with a significantly reduced workforce and an uncertain future. I left it at the company.
Wave: In May, Nvidia participated in a $1.05 billion round in a UK-based startup developing a self-learning system for autonomous driving. The company is testing vehicles in the UK and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Secure superintelligence: In September, NVIDIA became a backer of a new startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The $1 billion round reportedly valued the new 10-person AI lab at $5 billion.
Scale AI: In May 2024, Nvidia partnered with Accel and other tech giants Amazon and Meta to invest $1 billion in Scale AI, which provides data labeling services to enterprises to train AI models. . The round valued the San Francisco-based company at nearly $14 billion.
multi-billion dollar club
Crusoe: A startup building data centers that will reportedly be leased to Oracle, Microsoft and OpenAI raised $686 million in late November, according to an SEC filing. The investment was led by Founders Fund, with a long list of other investors including Nvidia.
Figure AI: In February, AI robotics startup Figure raised $675 million in Series B funding from Nvidia, OpenAI Startup Fund, Microsoft and others. This round valued the company at $2.6 billion.
Mistral AI: Nvidia made its second investment in Mistral when the France-based large-scale language model developer raised a $640 million Series B at a $6 billion valuation in June. Ta.
Cohere: In June, Nvidia invested in a $500 million round in Cohere, a large language model provider serving enterprises. The chipmaker first backed the Toronto-based startup a year ago.
Perplexity: Nvidia first invested in Perplexity in November 2023 and has participated in all of the AI search engine startup’s subsequent rounds, including a $500 million round in December, according to PitchBook data. This values the company at $9 billion.
Poolside: In October, AI coding assistant startup Poolside announced it had raised $500 million led by Bain Capital Ventures. Nvidia participated in the round, valuing the AI startup at $3 billion.
CoreWeave: Nvidia invested in the AI cloud computing provider in April 2023, when CoreWeave raised $221 million in funding. Since then, CoreWeave’s valuation has jumped from about $2 billion to $19 billion, and the company is reportedly aiming for a $35 billion IPO this year. CoreWeave allows customers to rent Nvidia GPUs by the hour.
Sakana AI: In September, Nvidia invested in a Japan-based startup that uses small datasets to train low-cost generative AI models. The startup has raised a large Series A round of approximately $214 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Inview: AI Institute, which claims to be developing AI systems capable of reasoning and coding, raised $200 million in September 2023 from investors including Nvidia, Astera Institute and former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt was procured.
Waabi: In June, the self-driving trucking startup raised $200 million in a Series B round co-led by existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures. Other investors include Nvidia, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Porsche Automobile Holding SE.
Transactions over $100 million
Ayar Labs: In December, Nvidia invested in a $155 million round in Ayar Labs. Ayar Labs is a company developing optical interconnects to improve AI computation and power efficiency. This is the third time Nvidia has backed the startup.
Kore.ai: Startup that develops AI chatbots for enterprises raised $150 million in December 2023. In addition to Nvidia, investors who participated in the financing included FTV Capital, Vistara Growth, and Sweetwater Private Equity.
Weka: In May, Nvidia invested in a $140 million round in AI-native data management platform Weka. The round valued the Silicon Valley company at $1.6 billion.
Runway: In June 2023, Runway, a startup building generative AI tools for multimedia content creators, raised $141 million in a Series C expansion from investors including Nvidia, Google, and Salesforce.
Bright Machines: In June 2024, Nvidia participated in a $126 million Series C in Bright Machines, a smart robotics and AI-driven software startup.
Vast Data: The startup, which provides storage solutions for AI and data analytics, raised $118 million in Series E at a valuation of $9.3 billion in December 2023. This is Nvidia’s third investment in Vast Data.
Enfabrica: In September 2023, Nvidia invested in a $125 million Series B of network chip designer Enfabrica. The startup raised another $115 million in November, but Nvidia did not participate in the round.
