How Nvidia Dominates AI Startup Investment: Strategy and Portfolio 2024-2025

Nvidia’s dominance in the artificial intelligence sector has gone beyond its traditional role as a GPU manufacturer. Since OpenAI revolutionized the tech landscape with ChatGPT three years ago, Nvidia has not only capitalized on its financial success but transformed its economic power into an ambitious strategy of investing in AI startups. With a market valuation reaching $4.6 trillion, the company has positioned its venture capital arm as one of the most influential players in funding emerging companies in the sector.

An investment strategy in startups reconfigured for the AI era

Nvidia’s reach within the AI technology ecosystem is virtually unprecedented. According to PitchBook data, in 2025 Nvidia participated in nearly 67 venture capital deals, significantly surpassing the 54 agreements completed throughout 2024. However, these numbers do not fully capture the true scale of its activity: NVentures, Nvidia’s corporate venture arm, recorded 30 investments in 2025, compared to just one in 2022. This explosive growth reflects Nvidia’s deliberate reconfiguration to become a central player shaping the future of AI.

Nvidia’s stated strategy links its investments directly to its mission of building a thriving ecosystem around artificial intelligence. The company selects startups it considers potentially transformative, capable of creating new markets and establishing new technological paradigms. This vision explains why Nvidia has invested in companies of such diverse nature, from software producers to physical infrastructure builders.

Infrastructure and data centers: the core of Nvidia’s startup investments

A recurring category in Nvidia’s portfolio is companies specializing in AI infrastructure and data centers. Over the past two years, the company has identified key providers facilitating the large-scale deployment of AI models.

Crusoe Energy exemplifies this trend. Nvidia invested $1.4 billion in its October 2024 Series E round, valuing the company at $10 billion. Crusoe not only builds specialized data centers but also acts as a strategic partner in OpenAI’s “Stargate” project, preparing infrastructure for the most demanding workloads.

Parallel to Crusoe operates Nscale, another company focused on building infrastructure for the Stargate project. Nvidia invested $1.1 billion in its September 2024 round and later contributed another $433 million in October through a SAFE round. Nscale is building data centers in the UK and Norway, consolidating physical presence for strategic computational capacity.

CoreWeave represents a complementary model: specializing in cloud services with GPU acceleration, CoreWeave received Nvidia investment in April 2023 during a $221 million round. For early-stage startups seeking validation, Nvidia’s participation acts as a credibility catalyst.

The decisive bet on language models and generative AI

Nvidia’s investments in companies developing language models reveal a second strategic pillar. OpenAI, the company that sparked the boom in generative AI, received $100 million from Nvidia in October 2024 as part of a $6.6 billion mega-funding round, valuing OpenAI at $157 billion. Although Nvidia’s stake was modest compared to investors like Thrive, the company announced commitments of up to $100 billion in future investments in OpenAI, cementing a strategic partnership (though Nvidia later clarified that there is no guarantee of reaching those amounts).

More aggressive was Nvidia’s investment in Anthropic: committing up to $10 billion in November 2025 as part of a strategic round also involving $5 billion from Microsoft. In return, Anthropic committed to spend $30 billion on Microsoft Azure services and to acquire next-generation systems from Nvidia, exemplifying how these investments generate demand for hardware.

xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, received Nvidia participation in a $6 billion round in December 2024. Nvidia also committed up to $2 billion additional for the next funding round of xAI (valued at $20 billion). The explicit goal is to ensure xAI’s systems will utilize Nvidia infrastructure.

In the open language model segment, Mistral AI (a French LLM developer) received its third Nvidia investment during a €1.7 billion ($2 billion) Series C round in September 2024. Reflection AI, a direct competitor to DeepSeek, secured $2 billion in October 2024 with Nvidia’s participation, valuing the company at $8 billion. Both companies exemplify Nvidia’s interest in diversifying LLM providers.

Cohere, an enterprise language model provider, has received multiple Nvidia investments, including a $500 million Series D in August that valued the company at $6.8 billion. Perplexity, an AI-powered search startup, received initial backing from Nvidia in November 2023 and continued participation in subsequent rounds, including a $500 million round in December 2024 that raised its valuation to $18 billion.

Beyond software: investments in autonomous driving and robotics

A third front of Nvidia’s startup investments covers advanced AI applications: autonomous driving and industrial robotics.

Wayve, a UK-based autonomous driving startup, received $1.05 billion from Nvidia in May 2024, with promises of an additional $500 million in future investments. Nuro, an autonomous delivery company, secured Nvidia’s participation in an $203 million round in August. Waabi, focused on autonomous trucks, obtained Nvidia funding during a $200 million Series B in June 2024.

In robotics, Figure AI stands out as a focus of investment. Nvidia participated in its over $1 billion Series C round in September 2024, valuing the robotics company at $39 billion. Nvidia’s first investment in Figure was in February 2024, indicating early support for this company.

Tools, productivity, and AI development infrastructure

Nvidia’s investments also extend to startups building tools and platforms for AI developers.

Cursor, an AI-powered coding assistant, received $100 million from Nvidia during a $2.3 billion Series D in November 2024, valuing the company at $29.3 billion. Poolside, another AI coding assistant startup, secured $500 million in October 2024 with Nvidia’s participation, valuing it at $3 billion.

Scale AI, a critical data labeling platform for training AI models, received a $1 billion investment from Nvidia in May 2024, valuing the company at nearly $14 billion. Runway, which offers generative AI tools for media production, secured Nvidia’s participation in a $308 million round in April.

Numbers that speak: Nvidia’s rapid growth in participation

The figures reveal a clear acceleration. Between 2024 and 2025, Nvidia nearly doubled its number of investment transactions (from 54 to 67 deals), while its NVentures arm shifted from occasional investments to systematic activity (30 investments in 2025 versus 1 in 2022).

Companies with funding over $1 billion in which Nvidia participated include OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, xAI, Mistral AI, Reflection AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Inflection (later acquired by Microsoft), Crusoe, Nscale, Wayve, and Figure AI. Companies with hundreds of millions in funding include Commonwealth Fusion ($863 million), Cohere, Perplexity, Poolside, Lambda, Black Forest Labs ($300 million for its Flux image generation model), CoreWeave, Together AI, Sakana AI, Nuro, among others.

Emerging startups with funding between $100 million and $300 million where Nvidia participated include Ayar Labs ($155 million, developer of optical interconnects for AI computing), Kore.ai ($150 million), Sandbox AQ ($150 million, with Google participation), Hippocratic AI ($141 million), Weka ($140 million), Bright Machines ($126 million), Enfabrica ($125 million initial, later acquiring technology for $900 million), Reka AI ($110 million), and others.

Nvidia’s vision: not just hardware, but an ecosystem

These data demonstrate that Nvidia’s startup investment strategy has evolved significantly. It’s not just about securing GPU demand, though that’s an incidental benefit. Nvidia positions itself as a central architect of the AI ecosystem, from physical infrastructure to models, from development tools to end-user applications.

This diversification of startup investments reflects strategic maturity: Nvidia understands that its long-term value depends on the entire AI ecosystem thriving. The company that not only sells GPUs but also funds those who will use them has secured an almost unbeatable position in the new technological paradigm. The scale of these investments suggests Nvidia is betting not only to maintain its dominance but to redefine the entire structure of the tech sector for the next decade.