Nvidia has emerged as a central force in the AI revolution, not only through its dominance in GPU manufacturing but also through an aggressive strategy of investing in startups shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Since the rise of generative AI, Nvidia’s revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have surged, propelling its market capitalization to $4.6 trillion. This financial strength has enabled the company to significantly expand its venture capital footprint, participating in nearly 67 deals in 2025—up from 54 in all of 2024—according to PitchBook. These investments, which include both direct stakes and strategic partnerships, are managed through both Nvidia’s corporate venture arm, NVentures, and its broader business development teams. The company’s goal is clear: to strengthen the AI ecosystem by backing startups it views as “game changers and market makers.” This strategy goes beyond simply supplying hardware—it positions Nvidia as a foundational player across the entire AI value chain. Among the most notable investments are those in high-profile AI labs. In October 2024, Nvidia made its first direct investment in OpenAI, contributing $100 million to a $6.6 billion round that valued the company at $157 billion. Although it did not participate in OpenAI’s later $40 billion funding round, Nvidia announced a long-term strategic partnership to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, though it later clarified in its filings that no guarantees exist for full execution. In November 2025, Nvidia made a major move into Anthropic, committing up to $10 billion as part of a strategic round that included a $5 billion investment from Microsoft. The deal was tied to a commitment by Anthropic to spend $30 billion on Microsoft Azure and purchase future Nvidia Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. Other significant investments include a $2.3 billion round in Cursor, a code-generation startup, where Nvidia joined Google and others in backing the company’s $29.3 billion valuation. Nvidia also participated in xAI’s $6 billion round in December 2024, with plans to invest up to $2 billion in equity to support the company’s hardware needs. In the European AI space, Nvidia backed Mistral AI in a €1.7 billion Series C, bringing its total investment in the French LLM developer to three rounds. It also invested in Reflection AI, a U.S.-based startup aiming to compete with Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek, contributing to a $2 billion round that valued the company at $8 billion. Nvidia’s investment in Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, was a $2 billion seed round that valued the startup at $12 billion. It also backed Inflection AI in 2023, though the company’s future was reshaped when Microsoft acquired its leadership and technology for $620 million. The chipmaker has also made strategic infrastructure bets. It invested in Crusoe, a data center developer building campuses in Texas and Wyoming for OpenAI’s Stargate project, and in Nscale, which is constructing data centers in the U.K. and Norway for the same initiative. Nvidia also backed Wayve, a UK-based autonomous driving startup, with a $1.05 billion round and plans for an additional $500 million investment. In robotics, Nvidia participated in Figure AI’s $1 billion Series C, valuing the humanoid robotics startup at $39 billion. It also invested in Scale AI in May 2024, joining Amazon and Meta in a $1 billion round that valued the data-labeling firm at nearly $14 billion. Beyond core AI, Nvidia has backed startups in diverse fields. It invested in Commonwealth Fusion, a nuclear fusion energy company, in an $863 million round. It has also backed Cohere, Perplexity, Lambda, Black Forest Labs, CoreWeave, Together AI, Firmus Technologies, Uniphore, Sakana AI, Nuro, Imbue, Waabi, Ayar Labs, Kore.ai, Sandbox AQ, Hippocratic AI, Weka, Runway, Bright Machines, and Reka AI, among others. These investments reflect a broad, long-term strategy: to ensure that the AI ecosystem thrives on Nvidia’s technology, from chips to data centers to model development. By becoming a key financial and technical partner to the most innovative startups, Nvidia is not just selling hardware—it’s building an AI empire.