No company has capitalized on the AI revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Its revenue, profitability and cash reserves have soared since introducing ChatGPT just over two years ago — and the many competing AI productivity services that have launched since then. And its share price increased more than eightfold.
During this time, the world’s leading maker of high-performance GPUs has used its fortunes to significantly increase investment in all kinds of startups, but especially AI startups.
The chip giant increased its venture capital activity in 2024, participating in 49 funding rounds for AI companies, a sharp increase from 34 in 2023, according to PitchBook data. This is a dramatic increase in investment compared to the previous four years combined, during which Nvidia funded only 38 AI deals. Note that these investments do not include those made by the company’s official VC fund, NVentures, which has also significantly increased its investments over the past two years. (PitchBook says NVentures did 24 deals in 2024, compared to just 2 in 2022.)
Nvidia has stated that the goal of its corporate investments is to expand the artificial intelligence ecosystem by backing startups it sees as “game changers and market shapers.”
Of course, Nvidia isn’t the only big tech company writing checks to AI startups. But in the last two years, she has been the most active. Compared to Nvidia’s 83 deals over two years (2023 and 2024), Alphabet has participated in 73, while Microsoft has done 40 rounds, PitchBook data shows.
Below is a list of startups that have raised rounds of more than $100 million in the past two years, where Nvidia is a named participant, organized from highest to lowest amount in the round.
The billion dollar club
OpenAI: Nvidia backed ChatGPT maker for the first time in October, writing a $100 million check for a colossal $6.6 billion round that valued the company at $157 billion. The chipmaker’s investment was dwarfed by OpenAI’s other backers, notably Thrive, which according to the New York Times invested $1.3 billion.
xAI: Nvidia participated in Elon Musk’s xAI’s $6 billion round. The deal revealed that not all OpenAI investors followed his request to refrain from supporting any of its direct competitors. After investing in ChatGPT maker in October, Nvidia joined xAI’s cap table a few months later.
Slope: One of Nvidia’s first major AI investments also had one of the more unusual results. In June 2023, Nvidia was one of several lead investors in the $1.3 billion round of Inflection, a company founded by Mustafa Suleyman, who earlier founded DeepMind. Less than a year later, Microsoft hired Inflection AI’s founders, paying $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 participated in a $1.05 billion round for the UK-based startup, which is developing a self-learning system for autonomous driving. The company is testing its vehicles in the UK and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Secure Superintelligence: In September, Nvidia was a backer of the new startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The $1 billion round reportedly valued the new 10 people AI lab at $5 billion.
AI Scale: In May 2024, Nvidia joined Accel and other tech giants Amazon and Meta to invest $1 billion in Scale AI, which provides data labeling services to companies to train artificial intelligence models. The round valued the San Francisco-based company at nearly $14 billion.
The multi-hundred million dollar club
Crusos: A startup that builds data centers according to information to 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, and the long list of other investors included Nvidia.
AI image: In February, Robotic AI startup Figure has raised a $675 million Series B round 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 France-based developer of large language models raised a $640 million Series B at a $6 billion valuation in June.
Cohere: In June, Nvidia invested in a $500 million round of Cohere, a large provider of language models serving businesses. The chipmaker first backed the Toronto-based startup a year ago.
Embarrassment: Nvidia first invested in Perplexity in November 2023 and has participated in every subsequent round of the AI search engine startup, including a $500 million round in December that valued the company at $9 billion, according to data from PitchBook.
By the pool: In October, the All included Coding assistant startup Poolside has announced that it has raised $500 million led by Bain Capital Ventures. Nvidia participated in the round, which valued the artificial intelligence 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 eyeing a $35 billion IPO this year. CoreWeave allows its customers to rent Nvidia GPUs on an hourly basis.
Sakana AI: In September, Nvidia invested in the Japan-based startup that trains low-cost generative AI models using small datasets. The startup raised a massive Series A round of around $214 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.
Soak: The AI research lab that claims to develop artificial intelligence systems that can reason and code raised a $200 million round in September 2023 from investors including Nvidia, the Astera Institute and former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.
Wabi: In June, the autonomous trucking startup raised a $200 million Series B round, led by existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures. Other investors included Nvidia, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.
Offers over $100 million
Ayar Labs: In December, Nvidia invested in $155 million round of Ayar Labs, a company that develops optical interfaces to improve computational artificial intelligence and power efficiency. This was the third time Nvidia supported the startup.
Kore.ai: The enterprise-focused AI chatbot developer raised $150 million in December 2023. In addition to Nvidia, investors who participated in the funding included FTV Capital, Vistara Growth and Sweetwater Private Equity.
Weka: In May, Nvidia invested in a $140 million round for its native data management platform Weka. The round valued the Silicon Valley company at $1.6 billion.
Airport runway: In June 2023, Runway, a startup that builds artificial intelligence tools for media content creators, raised a $141 million Series C round from investors including Nvidia, Google, and Salesforce.
Light Engines: In June 2024, Nvidia participated in one $126 million Series C; of Bright Machines, a smart robotics and artificial intelligence software startup.
Big Data: The startup that provides storage solutions for artificial intelligence and data analytics has raised $118 million Series E at a valuation of $9.3 billion in December 2023. This was the third time Nvidia has invested in Vast Data.
Enfabrica: In September 2023, Nvidia invested $125 million in the line of networking chip designer Enfabrica. Although the startup raised another $115 million in November, Nvidia did not participate in the round.
