Nvidia's $100 billion OpenAI investment highlights chipmaker's expanding AI empire and strategic venture playbook across startups, cloud, and quantum computing.

Nvidia has announced a $100 billion investment into OpenAI, marking the chipmaker’s largest venture to date and underscoring its expanding role as a central force in the AI ecosystem. The deal comes just weeks after Nvidia committed $5 billion to Intel, made a $500 million investment in self-driving startup Wayve, and pledged £500 million ($667.7 million) to U.K.-based cloud provider Nscale. This flurry of investments highlights how Nvidia has evolved from a semiconductor manufacturer into a major player in venture capital and strategic partnerships. The OpenAI investment, expected to be completed over several years, is not a one-time transaction but a multi-phase commitment. It reflects Nvidia’s strategy of using its massive cash flow—driven by soaring demand for AI chips—to secure long-term influence over the future of artificial intelligence. The move strengthens Nvidia’s ties with OpenAI, which played a pivotal role in popularizing generative AI with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. While Nvidia is a preferred supplier of computing power to OpenAI, the agreement does not make it the exclusive provider. For example, Cohere, another AI startup Nvidia has backed, recently announced it will use AMD chips alongside Nvidia’s. This illustrates that Nvidia’s investments are not tied to mandatory chip usage, though the company benefits from deep integration with the AI industry. Nvidia’s investment portfolio has grown rapidly. In 2022, it made 16 venture deals. That number rose to 41 in 2024, and by early 2025, it had already completed 51 such investments, excluding the OpenAI deal. Most of these are minority stakes in companies aligned with Nvidia’s core business—AI, robotics, enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, and biotech. The chipmaker’s publicly traded holdings are valued at $4.33 billion, including stakes in companies like Arm, CoreWeave, Nebius Group, and WeRide. Its nonmarketable equity securities rose from $1.8 billion to $3.8 billion in just one year, indicating a significant increase in private investments. These investments are not only strategic but also financial. Having Nvidia on a company’s cap table can boost investor confidence. When Nvidia disclosed stakes in public firms, their stock prices often rose—Intel’s jumped 18% after the chipmaker’s investment was announced. Regulators typically do not scrutinize vertical investments—such as a chipmaker backing a software or cloud company—especially when there are no exclusive supply agreements. Given the fast-moving nature of AI, such exclusivity is unlikely, reducing regulatory risk. Nvidia’s investments also serve as a window into its potential acquisition targets. The company previously acquired CentML after participating in its seed round and later spent $900 million to hire the CEO of Enfabrica and license its technology. Nvidia has stakes in several frontier AI companies, including Mistral AI, Cohere, Runway AI, Safe Superintelligence, and Thinking Machine Labs. It has also invested in quantum computing startups like PsiQuantum and Quantinuum, helping simulate quantum systems using its GPUs—despite a past misstep where a comment from CEO Jensen Huang caused a drop in quantum stocks. Some of its investments have already yielded returns. Nvidia’s stake in Scale AI, a data-labeling firm, paid off when Scale entered a $14.3 billion deal with Meta, leading to leadership changes and a major industry shift. Nvidia’s influence extends to the cloud sector. It holds a 7% stake in CoreWeave, a cloud provider that rents Nvidia chips, and recently secured a $6.3 billion order from the company. It also invested in Lambda Labs, a competitor to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the cloud space. As AI continues to evolve, Nvidia’s growing investment portfolio signals its ambition not just to supply chips, but to shape the future of technology across industries—from robotics and biotech to quantum computing and beyond.