Nvidia’s AI empire: A look at its top startup investments

No company has benefited from the artificial intelligence boom as dramatically as Nvidia. Since the launch of ChatGPT more than three years ago — followed by a wave of competing generative AI products — Nvidia’s revenue, profits, and cash reserves have surged. Its stock price has climbed sharply, pushing the company’s market value to around $4.6 trillion.

As the world’s leading supplier of high-performance GPUs, Nvidia has used this financial momentum to sharply increase its investments in startups, particularly those operating in artificial intelligence and related infrastructure.

Data from PitchBook shows that Nvidia participated in nearly 67 venture capital deals in 2025 alone, surpassing the 54 deals it completed across all of 2024. These figures do not include investments made through Nvidia’s formal corporate venture arm, NVentures, which has also ramped up activity. According to PitchBook, NVentures participated in 30 deals this year, compared with just one in 2022.

Nvidia has said its corporate investment strategy is focused on strengthening the AI ecosystem by supporting startups it views as potential “game changers and market makers.”

Below is an updated overview of startups that have raised funding rounds exceeding $100 million since 2023, with Nvidia listed as a participant. The list is ordered from the largest to the smallest funding rounds and highlights how deeply Nvidia has extended its influence beyond simply selling chips.

The Billion-Dollar-Round Club

OpenAI
Nvidia backed OpenAI for the first time in October 2024, reportedly investing $100 million as part of a massive $6.6 billion funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at $157 billion. Other investors contributed significantly more, including Thrive, which reportedly invested $1.3 billion. While PitchBook data shows Nvidia did not participate in OpenAI’s $40 billion round that closed in March, the company later announced plans to invest up to $100 billion over time through a strategic infrastructure partnership. Nvidia later clarified in its filings that there is no guarantee the full investment will be completed.

Anthropic
In November 2025, Nvidia made its first direct investment in Anthropic, committing up to $10 billion as part of a strategic round that also included a $5 billion investment from Microsoft. As part of the deal, Anthropic agreed to spend $30 billion on Microsoft Azure compute capacity and purchase Nvidia’s future Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.

Cursor
Nvidia made its first strategic investment in Cursor in November, joining a $2.3 billion Series D round co-led by Accel and Coatue. The deal valued the AI-powered coding assistant at $29.3 billion, nearly 15 times higher than its valuation at the start of the year.

xAI
Despite OpenAI’s earlier attempts to discourage investors from backing rivals, Nvidia participated in Elon Musk’s xAI $6 billion funding round in December 2024. Nvidia is also expected to invest up to $2 billion in xAI’s planned $20 billion round, structured to support further purchases of Nvidia hardware.

Mistral AI
Nvidia invested in Mistral AI for the third time in September, joining a €1.7 billion Series C round that valued the French LLM developer at approximately $13.5 billion.

Reflection AI
In October, Nvidia was among the most prominent backers of Reflection AI, contributing to a $2 billion funding round that valued the startup at $8 billion. The company is positioning itself as a U.S.-based alternative to lower-cost open-source models from China.

Thinking Machines Lab
Nvidia participated in the $2 billion seed round for Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. The funding, announced in July, valued the startup at $12 billion.

Inflection AI
Nvidia was a lead investor in Inflexion’s $1.3 billion round in June 2023. Less than a year later, Microsoft hired Inflexion’s founders and paid $620 million for a non-exclusive technology license, leaving the startup with a smaller workforce and uncertain direction.

Crusoe
In October, Nvidia joined a $1.4 billion Series E round for Crusoe, an AI data centre developer valued at $10 billion. Crusoe is a significant infrastructure partner in OpenAI’s Stargate project.

Nscale
After raising $1.1 billion in September, Nscale secured an additional $433 million through a SAFE funding round in October with Nvidia’s participation. The company is building data centres in the U.K. and Norway for OpenAI’s Stargate initiative.

Wayve
Nvidia participated in Wayve’s $1.05 billion round in May 2024. The autonomous driving startup is expected to receive an additional $500 million from Nvidia and is currently testing vehicles in the U.K. and California.

Figure AI
In September, Nvidia joined Figure AI’s Series C round of over $1 billion, valuing the humanoid robotics company at $39 billion. Nvidia first invested in the company earlier in 2024.

Scale AI
Nvidia participated in a $1 billion funding round for Scale AI in May 2024 alongside Accel, Amazon, and Meta. The round valued the company at nearly $14 billion. Meta later acquired a 49% stake for $14.3 billion and hired several senior Scale executives.

The Many-Hundreds-of-Millions-of-Dollars Club

Nvidia has also backed numerous startups raising between $200 million and $900 million, including Commonwealth Fusion, Cohere, Perplexity, Poolside, Lambda, Black Forest Labs, CoreWeave, Together AI, Firmus Technologies, Uniphore, Sakana AI, Nuro, Imbue, and Waabi.

These investments span nuclear fusion, enterprise AI, search, cloud infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and energy-efficient data centres.

Deals Above $100 Million

Nvidia has participated in additional funding rounds totalling more than $100 million for companies such as Ayar Labs, Kore.ai, Sandbox AQ, Hippocratic AI, Weka, Runway, Bright Machines, Enfabrica, and Reka AI. In some cases, Nvidia later expanded its involvement through strategic hires or technology licensing arrangements.