Nvidia has benefited the most from the AI revolution. Since the introduction of ChatGPT, a little more than two years ago, and the many competitive AI services launched since, its revenue, profitability and cash reserves have skyrocketed. Its stock price has risen by more than eightfold.
The world’s largest high-performance GPU manufacturer has used its soaring fortunes to increase investments in all kinds of startups, but especially in AI startups.
According to PitchBook, the chip giant increased its venture capital activity by participating in 49 funding round for AI companies in 2024. This is a dramatic increase from 34 rounds in 2023. This is a dramatic increase in investment when compared to the four previous years, where Nvidia only funded 38 AI deals. Note that this does not include the investments made by Nvidia’s formal corporate VC Fund, NVentures. This fund has also increased its investment in the past two years. PitchBook reports that NVentures made 24 deals in 2024 compared to only 2 in 2022.
Nvidia stated that its corporate investment goal is to expand AI ecosystem by supporting startups it considers as “game changers and makers.”
Ofcourse, Nvidia’s not the only large technology corporation writing checks to AI startup. It was the most active in the last two-year period. PitchBook data show that Alphabet has participated in 73 deals, while Microsoft is responsible for 40, compared to Nvidia’s 83 in two years (2023-2024).
Below, you will find a list of startups where Nvidia has been a named participant in rounds exceeding $100 million during the past two-year period. The list is organized from highest to lowest amount raised.
OpenAI : Nvidia supported the ChatGPT maker in October for the first time, reportedly writing $100 million towards a $6.6 billion round which valued the company at $157 billion. The chipmaker’s investment paled in comparison to that of OpenAI’s other investors, notably Thrive which, according to the New York Times, invested $1.3 billion.
x AI : Nvidia took part in the $6 billion round for Elon Musk’s xAI. The deal revealed that OpenAI’s investors did not all follow its request to refrain backing any of its competitors. Nvidia invested in ChatGPT in October and joined xAI a few month later.
xAI: Nvidia made one of its first significant AI investments, and it had a very unusual outcome. In June 2023 Nvidia was among the lead investors of Inflection, a company founded in part by Mustafa Suleyman who had previously founded DeepMind. Microsoft hired Inflection AI founders less than a year after, paying $620m for a non exclusive technology license. The company had a drastically reduced workforce and an uncertain future.
Nvidia took part in a $1.05billion round of funding for Wayve, a U.K. startup that is developing an autonomous driving system. The company is currently testing its vehicles in both the U.K., and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Safe Superintelligence : Nvidia backed the new startup, founded by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, in September. The new 10-person AI laboratory was valued at $5 billion in the $1 billion round.
AI Scales: Nvidia, Accel, Amazon, Meta and other tech giants will invest $1 billion into Scale AI in May 2024. Scale AI provides data-labeling to companies to train AI models. The round valued San Francisco-based company, at approximately $14 billion.
The many-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars club
Crusoe: A startup building data centers reportedly to be leased to Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI raised $686 million in late November, according to an SEC filing. The investment was led Founders Fund and included Nvidia in a long list of investors.
In January, AI robots startup Figure raised $675 million in Series B funding from Nvidia. OpenAI Startup Fund and Microsoft were also investors. The company was valued at $2.6 billion.
Mistral AI Nvidia made its second investment in Mistral when the French-based large model developer raised $640 million in Series B in June at a valuation of $6 billion.
Cohere : Nvidia invested $500 million in Cohere, a large-language model provider for enterprises, in June. The chipmaker backed the Toronto startup for the first time a year earlier.
Perplexity : Nvidia invested in Perplexity for the first time in November 2023. Since then, it has participated in all subsequent rounds of the AI search engine startup. This includes the $500 million round that took place in December which valued the company at $9 Billion, according to PitchBook.
Poolside : In November, the AI coding assistant startup Poolside announced that it raised $500 millions led by Bain Capital Ventures. Nvidia was a participant in the round which valued the AI startup AI at $3 billion.
CoreWeave : Nvidia made a $221 million investment in CoreWeave in April 2023 when CoreWeave raised funding. CoreWeave has seen its valuation jump from $2 billion to nearly $19 billion. The company is reportedly aiming for a $35 billion IPO in this year. CoreWeave offers its customers the option to rent Nvidia graphics cards on an hourly rate.
AI Department : Nvidia invested in the Japan based startup that trains low-cost generative AI using small datasets. The startup raised a massive $214 million Series A round at a valuation $1.5 billion.
Imbue, the AI research lab that says is developing AI systems that are able to reason and code, raised a $200-million round in September 2023, from investors including Nvidia and Astera Institute. Former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt was also a part of this $200-million round.
The autonomous trucking startup Waabi raised $200 million in June from existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures. Other investors included Nvidia Venture Capital, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.
Deals over $100 million
Setting Labs: Nvidia invested $155 million in December into Ayar Labs. Ayar Labs is a company that develops optical interconnects for AI compute and energy efficiency. It was the third time Nvidia had backed the startup.
Kore.ai () : In December 2023, the startup developing AI chatbots for enterprise raised $150 million. Investors participating in the funding include FTV Capital, Vistara Growth and Sweetwater Private Equity, as well as Nvidia.
Weka : Nvidia invested $140 million in May for AI-native platform Weka. The Silicon Valley company was valued at $1.6 billion in the round. Runway: Runway, an AI startup that builds generative tools for multimedia content producers, raised $141 million in Series C funding from investors including Nvidia and Salesforce. Bright Machines: (19459011) In June 2024 Nvidia invested $126 million in Bright Machines, an AI-driven and smart robotics software startup.
Only Data: In December 2023, the startup that provides storage for AI and data analysis raised $118 million in Series E with a $9.3 Billion valuation. This was the third investment by Nvidia in Vast. Enfabrica Nvidia invested $125 million in the Series B of networking chips designer Enfabrica in September 2023. Nvidia did not participate in the November round of $115 million raised by the startup.