San Francisco, CA – No company has capitalized on the AI revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Since the introduction of ChatGPT over two years ago, the high-performance GPU maker has seen its revenue, profitability, and cash reserves skyrocket, boosting its stock price significantly. During this period of growth, Nvidia has used its fortune to increase investments in startups, particularly those in the AI sector.
In 2024, Nvidia participated in 49 funding rounds for AI companies, a notable increase from the 34 rounds in 2023, according to data from PitchBook. This surge in investment marks a dramatic increase compared to the previous four years combined, where Nvidia funded only 38 deals in AI. These figures do not include investments made by Nvidia’s corporate VC fund, NVentures, which also boosted its investment activity with 24 deals in 2024, up from just two deals in 2022. So far in 2025, Nvidia has participated in seven funding rounds.
Nvidia’s corporate investment strategy aims to expand the AI ecosystem by backing startups it views as “game changers and market makers.” Among its significant investments, Nvidia participated in several funding rounds exceeding $100 million. Notably, Nvidia backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, with a $100 million investment in a $6.6 billion round, although its contribution was modest compared to other investors like Thrive, which invested $1.3 billion.
Additionally, Nvidia invested in Elon Musk’s xAI with a $6 billion funding round, despite OpenAI’s request for its investors not to fund its direct competitors. Other significant investments include Inflection, which raised $1.3 billion, Wayve’s $1.05 billion round for autonomous driving technology, and Scale AI’s $1 billion round to enhance data-labeling services for AI model training.
The tech giant also invested heavily in the “many-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars club.” For instance, Crusoe raised $686 million to lease data centers to major tech companies, including Oracle and Microsoft, with Nvidia’s participation. Figure AI, a robotics startup, raised $675 million in February 2024, while Mistral AI received $640 million for its large language model development.
Other notable investments include Lambda, an AI cloud provider, which raised $480 million, and Cohere, a large language model provider, with a $500 million funding round. Smaller investments of over $100 million include Ayar Labs, Kore.ai, Sandbox AQ, and Hippocratic AI, focusing on improving AI efficiency, enterprise chatbots, large quantitative models, and healthcare language models, respectively.
Nvidia’s strategic focus on AI startups demonstrates its commitment to spearheading innovation within the sector, with a particular emphasis on companies capable of reshaping the AI market landscape.
