No company has profited from the AI revolution more than Nvidia. Its revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have soared since ChatGPT was released over three years ago—and since the competitive generative AI services and startup that have sprung up since. Its stock price has surged, and it is now a $4.6 trillion market-cap company.
The world’s top high-performance GPU maker, which leveraged its burgeoning fortunes to make substantial investments in startups — AI foremost among them.
NVIDIA has been involved in almost 67 venture capital deals this year, more than the 54 it completed all of last year, according to PitchBook data. These investments do not include those made by its official corporate VC fund, NVentures, which also saw an increase during that period. (PitchBook says NVentures did 30 deals this year, as opposed to 1 last year.)
NVIDIA has said its corporate investing aims to grow the AI ecosystem by supporting startups that it sees as “game changers and market makers.
Here is a list of startups raising rounds north of $100 million with Nvidia as an identified investor since 2023, in descending order of the amount raised.
This list also demonstrates just how far and wide Nvidia has been able to spread its tentacles in tech beyond just selling products.
The billion-dollar-round Startup
OpenAI:
In October 2024, Nvidia backed the ChatGPT maker for the first time, with a reported $100 million check as part of a massive $6.6 billion round that valued the company at $157 billion. The investment from the chipmaker was small compared with that of OpenAI’s other backers, including Thrive, which invested $1.3 billion, according to The New York Times. Although PitchBook data doesn’t show that Nvidia participated in OpenAI’s $40 billion financing round finalised in March, the company said it will invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI over many years, possibly structured as a strategic partnership for deploying gigantic AI infrastructure. NVIDIA later disclosed in its quarterly filings that it might not actually follow through, stating, “There is no assurance that any investment will be completed on expected terms, if at all.”
Anthropic:
NVIDIA made its initial direct investment in the AI lab alongside that $5 billion Microsoft check, signing on to send as much as $10 billion to the lab when it invested in November 2025. As part of the “circular” spending agreement, Anthropic agreed to purchase $30 billion in Microsoft Azure compute capacity and to buy Nvidia’s forthcoming Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.
Cursor:
NVIDIA invested in the AI-powered code assistant for the first time this past November, contributing to a $2.3 billion Series D round led by Accel and Coatue. The agreement valued Cursor at $29.3 billion, nearly 15 times its value at the start of the year. NVIDIA is a long-time enterprise customer, but it was also its debut as an equity owner, joining Google.
xAI:
In 2024, OpenAI attempted to convince its investors to avoid investing in any of its rivals. But Nvidia joined the $6 billion round for Elon Musk’s business xAI last December anyway. NVIDIA will also spend as much as $2 billion on an equity stake in xAI’s planned $20 billion financing round, Bloomberg reported, with the deal designed to help xAI buy more NVIDIA gear.
Mistral AI:
NVIDIA doubled down on Mistral for a third time when the French large language model (LLM) startup secured a €1.7 billion (approximately $2 billion) Series C at an € 11.7 billion ($13.5 billion) post-money valuation in September.
Reflection AI:
NVIDIA was among the most prominent investors in Reflection AI, a one-year-old startup that raised $2 billion in October at an $8 billion valuation. Reflection AI is emerging as a U.S. rival to the Chinese-backed DeepSeek, whose open-source LLM could be a cheaper alternative to closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Thinking Machines Lab:
5- Nvidia was one of a long list of investors who took part in former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab’s $2 billion seed round. The new AI startup’s investment was announced in a formal sense, and the $12 billion used to value the company put new capital into another technology startup even as several of them struggle to exit their private debuts.
Inflection:
One of Nvidia’s earliest big AI bets also had one of the odder (though ever more typical) outcomes. In June 2023, Nvidia was also one of the lead investors in Inflexion’s $1.3bn round — a company co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman, the well-known founder of DeepMind. Less than a year later, Microsoft poached Inflexion’s founders and paid $620 million for a non-exclusive technology license, leaving the company with a severely slashed staff and an uncertain future.
Crusoe:
The chipmaker participated in a $1.4 billion Series E round that valued the AI data centre developer at $10 billion in October. Crusoe was previously funded by Nvidia, which first invested in the company during its 2024 Series D. Crusoe is a crucial underpinning of the ‘Stargate’ project, developing large data centre campuses in Texas and Wyoming that it will rent to Oracle specifically for running OpenAI’s workloads on many machines.
Nscale:
Following the startup’s $1.1 billion round last month, Nvidia joined Nscale’s SAFE funding round of $433 million in October. That’s a deal that locks in future equity for investors. Nscale, created in 2023 after spinning off from Australian cryptocurrency mining firm Arkon Energy, is developing data centres in the U.K. and Norway to support OpenAI’s Stargate project.
Wayve:
In May of 2024, Nvidia came on board for a more than $1 billion round for the U.K.-based startup working to build a self-learning system for autonomous driving. In September, the startup told TechCrunch that Nvidia was set to invest another $500 million into Wayve. Wayve has been testing its vehicles in the United Kingdom and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Figure AI:
In September, Nvidia invested in Figure AI’s more than $1 billion Series C round, which valued the humanoid robotics startup at $39 billion. The chipmaker initially backed Figure in February 2024, when the company raised a $675 million Series B round at a $2.6 billion valuation.
Scale AI:
NVIDIA became an investor in Scale AI alongside Accel and fellow tech titans Amazon and Meta in May 2024, contributing $1 billion to the startup, which provides label data to companies looking to train AI models. The round valued the San Francisco company at close to nearly $14 billion. In June, Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale and poached the company’s co-founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, along with several early Scale employees.
The many-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars club
Commonwealth Fusion:
The chipmaker joined the nuclear fusion-energy startup in its $863 million fundraising round in August. The company was valued at $3 billion as part of the deal, which also included investors such as Google and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Cohere:
The chipmaker has backed business LLM provider Cohere in a series of funding rounds, including the $500 million Series D, which closed in August and valued Cohere at $6.8 billion. NVIDIA initially backed the Toronto-based startup in 2023.
Perplexity:
The investment continues Nvidia’s support for Perplexity — the American chipmaker first backed the AI search engine startup in November 2023 and has joined most of its subsequent funding rounds, including a $500 million round that closed in December 2024. The chipmaker joined the company’s July funding round, which valued Perplexity at $18 billion. But Nvidia didn’t participate in the startup’s subsequent $200 million fundraise in September, which valued the company at $20 billion, according to PitchBook data.
Poolside:
In October 2024, Poolside, the AI coding assistant startup, announced a $500 million capital raise led by Bain Capital Ventures. NVIDIA was an investor in the round, which valued the AI startup at $3 billion.
Lambda:
AI cloud provider Lambda, which serves model training use cases, raised $480 million in Series D funding in February, with an expected valuation of $2.5 billion . The round was co-led by SGW and Andra Capital Lambda, and backed by Nvidia, ARK Invest and others. One of Lambda’s chief businesses is renting servers powered by Nvidia GPUs.
Black Forest Labs:
NVIDIA also participated in a $300 million Series B investment in the German startup behind the “Flux” image generation models last December. The round, which was co-led by Salesforce Ventures and Anjney Midha (AMP), priced the company at $3.25 billion.
CoreWeave:
CoreWeave is now a public company and no longer a startup, but Nvidia invested in the GPU-cloud provider during its startup days, vaulting it into 2013 byways with both feet off the ground. That was the moment CoreWeave could announce $221 million in new funding. NVIDIA remains a significant shareholder.
Together AI:
NVIDIA invested in this company, which provides cloud-based services for building A.I. models, as part of its $305 million Series B in February. The round brought Together AI’s valuation to $3.3 billion and was co-led by Prosperity7, a Saudi Arabian venture firm, and General Catalyst. NVIDIA backed that company for the first time in 2023.
Firmus Technologies:
In September — Nvidia is an investor! Towards the clean energy revolution, Firmus is also building an energy-frugal “AI factory” in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, the startup, which initially offered cooling technologies for Bitcoin mining.
Uniphore:
NVIDIA also teamed up with fellow tech behemoths AMD, Snowflake, and Databricks in October to lead a $260 million Series F round for this Business AI company. Multimodal platform Uniphore enables enterprises to automate complex processes and deploy AI agents across customer service, sales , and marketing.
Sakana AI:
NVIDIA is big in simulations and has trained generative AI models called Teraflops that generate far more data than can be stored. The start-up has raised a whopping Series A round totalling about $214 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Sakana raised an additional $135 million in November at a $2.65 billion valuation, though Nvidia did not participate in that round, according to the offering document.
Nuro:
In August, Nvidia participated in a $203 million funding round for the self-driving delivery start-up. The deal valued Nuro at $6 billion but represents a steep 30% slide from its high-water mark: an $8.6 billion valuation in 2021.
Imbue:
The AI research lab, building AI systems that can reason and code, raised a $200 million round in September 2023 from investors including Nvidia, Astera Institute, and former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.
Waabi:
The self-driving trucking startup raised a $200 million Series B round led by existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures in June 2024. Among others, investors included Nvidia, Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.
Deals of over a $100 million
Ayar Labs:
In Dec 2024 – invested in the $155m round for AYAR Labs (acquirer of RUNFAAST), a company developing optical interconnects to increase AI compute and power efficiency. It marked Nvidia’s third investment in the startup.
Kore.ai:
The start-up behind AI chatbots for enterprise use raised $150 million in December 2023. Along with Nvidia, FTV Capital, Vistara Growth , and Sweetwater Private Equity were also investors in the funding.
Sandbox AQ:
NVIDIA, in April, joined Google, BNP Paribas and others in sinking $150 million into Sanbox AQ. This startup has created LQMs (large quantitative models) designed to crunch vast amounts of math and statistics with, if not better, the accuracy of old-fashioned AI. The investment brought the total raised in Sandbox AQ’s Series E round to $450 million and pushed the company’s valuation to $5.75 billion.
Hippocratic AI:
It’s building large language models for health care, and it announced in January that it raised a $141 million in Series B funding at a valuation of $1.64 billion, led by Kleiner Perkins. NVIDIA participated in the round, as did existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst, among others. The company notes that its AI tools can take on non-diagnostic patient-facing work, such as pre-operations, remote patient monitoring, and appointment prep. Hippocratic raised another $126 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion in November, but Nvidia did not participate in the round.
Weka:
In May of 2024, Nvidia also invested in Weka, an AI-native data management platform that raised $140 million. The round valued the Silicon Valley company at $1.6 billion.
Runway:
Nvidia was part of Runway’s $308 million round in April, led by General Atlantic; the startup , which uses generative AI to create media production models, is valued at about $3.55 billion, according to PitchBook data. The chipmaker has had a stake in it since 2023.
Bright Machines: In June 2024, Nvidia participated in a $126 million Series C funding round for the intelligent robotics and AI-driven software start-up Bright Machines.
Enfabrica:
NVIDIA invested: September 2023, NVIDIA participated in Enfabrica, a networking chips designer’s $125 million Series B. The startup raised another $115 million in November 2024, but Nvidia was not one of the investors. In September, Nvidia was said to have spent more than $900 million to acquire Enfabrica’s chief executive and employees, while licensing its technology in a transaction known as an “acquihire.”
Reka AI:
In July, AI research lab Reka raised $110 million in a round led by Snowflake and Nvidia. The deal tripled the startup’s valuation to more than $1 billion, Bloomberg and others reported.
