In the midst of the AI revolution, no company is better positioned than Nvidia. Since ChatGPT ignited the market over two years ago, the high-performance GPU giant's revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have skyrocketed, driving its stock price higher. Fueled by its growing wealth, Nvidia is aggressively expanding its investments in the AI sector, particularly in startups.
According to PitchBook data, Nvidia significantly increased its venture capital activity in 2024, participating in 49 funding rounds for AI companies—a substantial increase from 34 rounds in 2023. Even more striking, this number far surpasses the total from the previous four years (2019-2022) combined, during which Nvidia invested in only 38 AI deals. Importantly, this doesn't include investments from Nvidia's corporate venture capital fund, NVentures, which also significantly ramped up its activity over the past two years, participating in 24 deals in 2024 compared to just 2 in 2022. As of early 2025, Nvidia has already participated in 7 funding rounds.
Image Source Note: Image generated by AI, licensed through Midjourney.
Nvidia states its corporate investment goal is to further strengthen the AI ecosystem by supporting startups it views as "game-changers and market creators."
Below is a list of startups in which Nvidia has participated as a named investor with investments exceeding $100 million since 2023 (including new investments through early 2025), ranked by funding size from highest to lowest:
The Billion-Dollar Club:
- OpenAI: Nvidia's October investment in the ChatGPT maker was part of its massive $6.6 billion funding round, contributing $100 million and valuing OpenAI at $157 billion.
- xAI: Nvidia participated in Elon Musk's xAI's $6 billion funding round.
- Inflection: Nvidia was one of the major investors in the company's $1.3 billion funding round in June 2023.
- Wayve: Nvidia participated in the British autonomous driving startup's $1.05 billion funding round in May.
- Scale AI: In May 2024, Nvidia joined tech giants like Amazon and Meta in investing $1 billion in Scale AI.
The Hundreds-of-Millions-of-Dollars Club:
- Crusoe: Nvidia participated in the data center startup's $686 million funding round in late November.
- Figure AI: In February 2024, Nvidia invested in the AI robotics startup's $675 million Series B round.
- Mistral AI: Nvidia again invested in Mistral AI in June, participating in its $640 million Series B round.
- Lambda: Nvidia participated in the AI cloud provider's $480 million Series D round in February.
- Cohere: Nvidia invested in Cohere's $500 million funding round in June, following an initial investment in 2023.
- Perplexity: Nvidia has participated in every funding round for Perplexity since its initial investment in November 2023, including the $500 million round in December.
- Poolside: Nvidia participated in the AI coding assistant startup's $500 million funding round in October.
- CoreWeave: Nvidia invested in the AI cloud computing provider in April 2023; the company is now valued at $19 billion and has filed for an IPO.
- Together AI: Nvidia participated in the company's $305 million Series B round in February, following an initial investment in 2023.
- Sakana AI: Nvidia invested in the Japanese generative AI startup in September, participating in its approximately $214 million Series A round.
- Imbue: Nvidia invested in the AI research lab's $200 million funding round in September 2023.
- Waabi: Nvidia participated in the autonomous trucking startup's $200 million Series B round in June.
Transactions Exceeding $100 Million:
- Ayar Labs: Nvidia invested $155 million in Ayar Labs in December.
- Kore.ai: Nvidia participated in the enterprise AI chatbot startup's $150 million funding round in December 2023.
- Hippocratic AI: Nvidia participated in the healthcare LLM startup's $141 million Series B round in January.
- Weka: Nvidia invested $140 million in Weka, an AI-native data management platform, in May.
- Runway: Nvidia participated in the multimedia generative AI tools startup's $141 million Series C round in June 2023.
- Bright Machines: Nvidia participated in the smart robotics and AI-powered software startup's $126 million Series C round in June 2024.
- Enfabrica: Nvidia invested $125 million in Enfabrica, a network chip design company, in September 2023.
Through these large-scale investments in highly promising AI startups, Nvidia is not only solidifying its leading position in AI infrastructure but also actively building and expanding its future technology ecosystem, further establishing its core influence in the age of artificial intelligence.
