Nvidia’s AI Investment Surge: Backing Startups from Generative AI to Robotics and Beyond

Nvidia has emerged as a central force in the global AI revolution, not only through its dominance in GPU technology but also through an aggressive strategy of investing in high-potential startups. Since the rise of generative AI, the company’s revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have surged, propelling its market cap to $4.5 trillion. This financial strength has enabled Nvidia to significantly expand its venture capital footprint, with over 50 deals in 2025 alone—surpassing its total of 48 deals in all of 2024, according to PitchBook. These investments go beyond financial support; they reflect a broader strategy to strengthen the AI ecosystem by backing companies that are shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Nvidia’s corporate investing arm, NVentures, has also accelerated its pace, completing 21 deals in 2025 compared to just one in 2022. Among Nvidia’s most notable investments are those in companies raising over $100 million, highlighting its focus on transformative AI ventures. In the billion-dollar club, Nvidia played a key role in several landmark rounds. It led a $2 billion funding round for Reflection AI, a U.S.-based AI startup aiming to compete with Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek. It also participated in the $2 billion seed round for Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, which was valued at $12 billion. Nvidia’s early involvement in Inflection AI, a company co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman of DeepMind, ended with Microsoft acquiring the core team and technology for $620 million, leaving Inflection restructured. Nvidia invested $100 million in OpenAI’s $6.6 billion round in October 2024 and later announced a strategic commitment of up to $100 billion in infrastructure support. It also backed Elon Musk’s xAI with a $2 billion equity investment as part of a $20 billion fundraising effort. In September, Nvidia joined a €1.7 billion (about $2 billion) round for Mistral AI, the French LLM developer, which now boasts a $13.5 billion valuation. Other major investments include $1 billion in Scale AI in May 2024, which helped fuel the data-labeling company’s growth before Meta acquired a 49% stake and hired its CEO. Nvidia also invested in Figure AI’s over $1 billion Series C, valuing the humanoid robotics startup at $39 billion, and in Wayve’s $1.05 billion round for autonomous driving, with an additional $500 million commitment expected. In the hundreds-of-millions club, Nvidia backed startups like Commonwealth Fusion (nuclear fusion), Crusoe (AI data centers), Cohere (enterprise LLMs), Perplexity (AI search), Poolside (AI coding), Lambda (AI cloud), CoreWeave (GPU cloud), Together AI (AI infrastructure), Firmus Technologies (energy-efficient AI data centers in Tasmania), Sakana AI (low-cost Japanese AI), Nuro (self-driving delivery), Imbue (reasoning and coding AI), Waabi (autonomous trucking), Ayar Labs (optical interconnects), Kore.ai (enterprise chatbots), Sandbox AQ (quantitative AI), Hippocratic AI (healthcare AI), Weka (AI data management), Runway (generative media), Bright Machines (smart robotics), Enfabrica (networking chips), and Reka AI (research-focused AI). These investments underscore Nvidia’s vision: to be not just a supplier of hardware but a foundational pillar of the AI economy—investing in the companies that will build the next generation of intelligent systems, from robotics and healthcare to energy and infrastructure.