Nvidia accelerates the AI revolution with strategic investments in game-changing startups like OpenAI, xAI, and Mistral AI, expanding its influence across the AI ecosystem.
Nvidia’s Rise in the AI Era
No company has capitalized on the AI boom quite like Nvidia. Since the launch of ChatGPT and the rise of generative AI, Nvidia’s revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have soared, pushing its market capitalization to an astonishing $4.5 trillion. Leveraging this financial clout, the GPU giant has significantly increased its investments in AI startups, fueling innovation across the tech ecosystem. According to PitchBook data, Nvidia has participated in 50 venture capital deals in 2025 alone, surpassing its 48 deals in all of 2024. These investments are in addition to its formal corporate VC fund, NVentures, which also accelerated activity, engaging in 21 deals this year compared to just one in 2022. Nvidia’s investment strategy aims to expand the AI ecosystem by backing startups it considers “game changers and market makers.”
The Billion-Dollar Startup Club
Among the most notable investments, Nvidia first backed OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, in October 2024, contributing $100 million to a $6.6 billion funding round. The chipmaker later announced plans to invest up to $100 billion over time, supporting massive AI infrastructure deployments. Despite OpenAI advising investors to avoid rivals, Nvidia also participated in Elon Musk’s xAI $6 billion funding round in 2024, committing an additional $2 billion for hardware purchases. In France, Nvidia invested for the third time in Mistral AI, a large language model developer, during a €1.7 billion ($2 billion) Series C, valuing the company at $13.5 billion. In the United States, Nvidia led a $2 billion funding round for the one-year-old Reflection AI, which aims to compete with Chinese AI models, and joined a $2 billion seed round for Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.
Other Strategic Investments
Other major investments include Inflection, where Nvidia co-led a $1.3 billion round in 2023 before Microsoft acquired a technology license; Nscale, which received $1.1 billion and $433 million SAFE rounds to build data centers for OpenAI’s Stargate project; Wayve, developing autonomous driving technology, which secured $1.05 billion with an additional $500 million planned; Figure AI, a humanoid robotics startup that raised $1 billion Series C funding valued at $39 billion; and Scale AI, a San Francisco-based data-labeling company, which raised $1 billion, valued at nearly $14 billion.
The Many-Hundreds-of-Millions Club
Nvidia has also invested in the many-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars club, including Commonwealth Fusion, a nuclear fusion-energy startup with an $863 million funding round valued at $3 billion, and Crusoe, a company building data centers leased to Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which raised $686 million in November 2024.
Shaping the Future of AI
From ChatGPT to autonomous driving and fusion energy, Nvidia’s investments show how the company is not just a GPU manufacturer, but a powerhouse shaping the AI landscape. Its financial and strategic backing is helping startups scale quickly, accelerate AI innovation, and secure a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving tech industry.
