Over the past two years, Nvidia, by far the largest maker of artificial intelligence chips, has increased its investments in startups pushing it deeper into the artificial intelligence space. According According to S&P Global and Crunchbase, the funding and investment database, Nvidia’s startup investments are up 280% year over year from 2022 to 2023, with the company and its VC arm, Nvidia Ventures, participating in ~46 deals last year.
It’s not the only thing. Nvidia’s main rivals in the AI chip space – AMD, Arm and Intel – have also invested aggressively in startups, trying to gain ground in markets that include the particularly frothy AI manufacturing segment.
We at TechCrunch were curious to see how investment stacked up among the leading AI chip makers — Nvidia, AMD, Arm, and Intel. So we looked at Crunchbase data, looking at recent activity from each chip maker and their VC divisions.
Intel
Of Nvidia’s competitors, Intel has far and away the biggest startup investment business thanks to Intel Capital, its longtime VC. In 2023, Intel Capital deployed over $350 million across its investments, including OpenAI competitor AI21 Labs, video analytics platform Twelve Labs, app delivery network Fly.io, and workplace security equipment TuMeke.
Crunchbase data is not exhaustive. However, it shows that Intel Capital was involved in 32 startup deals in 2023, up from 47 in 2022. Intel also directly invested in two startups last year, per Crunchbase — bringing its total number of deals to 34 in 2023 and 47 in 2022.
Interestingly, AI startups—despite their strategic importance to the chip industry these days—are a relatively small part of Intel’s business portfolio. According to Crunchbase, Intel’s holdings in software, IT and business SaaS companies far outnumber its holdings in AI startups by deal volume.
That could change as Intel seeks to offer new software products and services, including GenAI-enabled products, that make its hardware more attractive for a range of AI applications. Just in January, Intel created a company, Articul8 AI, to create GenAI solutions powered by Intel chips for businesses in the aerospace, financial services, telecommunications and semiconductor industries.
Arm
Arm may not be a particularly active startup investor compared to Intel. But the company, which makes most of its money licensing chipset designs to customers, has several direct investment deals as well as offerings through Deeptech Labs, a VC fund and accelerator that Arm co-launched with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Martlet Capital.
Last year, Arm made four direct investments in startups — microprocessor business SiPearl, eSIM security company Kigen and Raspberry Pi, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation — and six through Deeptech Labs. Beneficiaries of Deeptech Labs’ cash include Nu Quantum, a quantum networking startup. RoboK, which makes 3D sensing technology. and Perceptual Robotics, a provider of automated wind turbine inspection technology.
So in total, Arm poured money into 10 startups in 2023. That’s a significant uptick from 2022, when Arm invested in just four companies — a direct investment in open-source hardware startup Arduino and three investments through Deeptech Labs ( Waku Robotics, Xapien and SonicEdge).
One assumes that Arm’s future investments in AI will increase in a more obvious way, given that the company’s bets on sales of both its data center and consumer AI chips will skyrocket this year.
AMD
AMD has its own VC organization, AMD Ventures, through which it invests in startups. But for AMD, the offerings are relatively few.
Last year, AMD Ventures made a handful of investments, participating in Series A for Ethernovia, a startup building a family of ethernet chips and software, and investing in rounds for Essential AI, which looks to pioneer AI-based software automation technology. Moreh, a company that creates tools for optimizing AI models. and Hugging Face (along with Intel and Nvidia). Last year, AMD signed a single deal with Radian Arc, an infrastructure-as-a-service platform for cloud gaming and AI — and made no other investments.
AMD’s 2023 deal total stood at four — on the conservative side compared to competitors. But 2024 might look a little different. Contacted for comment, AMD had this to share from Matthew Hein, the company’s chief strategy officer for enterprise development:
AMD Ventures has increased its investment activity over the past year and is looking to accelerate further in 2024, aiming to reach a double-digit investment level. We invest at various stages, supporting promising early-stage startups poised to become market leaders, as well as mature later-stage companies. Most of our new investments in 2024 will target the AI ecosystem, including AI platforms, model companies and AI infrastructure offerings.
2024 will be a pivotal year for AMD in other ways. The company is ramping up production of its MI300 AI chip, which is designed to handle AI workloads in data centers, and is launching Ryzen 8040, its mobile AI-accelerated processors intended for laptops.
With the numbers
So it’s true: Nvidia isn’t the only chipmaker investing in early-stage ventures. But does seems to outperform the competition. In the first three quarters of 2023 alone, Nvidia poured nearly a billion dollars into “unaffiliated” companies, according to previous S&P Global report — a number that even Intel Capital struggled to match.
Success in the AI chipmaking space doesn’t have to involve fostering a strong startup ecosystem. But it’s clear that Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies with control of about 95 percent of the market for artificial intelligence chips, is playing for reservations — trying to assert dominance by spreading its economic influence far and wide.
I’d say his opponents have their work cut out for them.
