Nvidia is doubling down on AI startup investing in 2024. The chip giant jumped into 49 funding rounds for AI companies this year — up from 34 in 2023 and past four years combined (38 deals). This excludes an even bigger surge from its formal VC arm, NVentures, which went from 2 deals in 2022 to 24 in 2024. In 2025, Nvidia has already joined 7 rounds.
The goal: expand the AI ecosystem by backing “game changers and market makers,” Nvidia says.
Here’s the breakdown of major AI rounds over $100 million where Nvidia is a named investor: 
Billion-dollar rounds
- OpenAI – Nvidia’s first ChatGPT investment: $100 million part of a massive $6.6 billion raise valuing OpenAI at $157 billion.
- xAI – Nvidia jumped in Elon Musk’s $6 billion round, ignoring OpenAI’s request not to back competitors.
- Inflection AI – Nvidia led a $1.3 billion round in June 2023. A year later, Microsoft hired Inflection’s founders leaving the startup’s future unclear.
- Wayve – Nvidia backed this UK autonomous driving startup in a $1.05 billion round.
- Scale AI – Joined Amazon, Meta, and Accel in a $1 billion investment for the data-labeling company valued near $14 billion.
Hundreds-of-millions club
- Crusoe – Data center startup raised $686 million with Nvidia as a backer.
- Figure AI – $675 million round including Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI Startup Fund.
- Mistral AI – French LLM developer raised $640 million Series B with Nvidia.
- Lambda – Nvidia invested in a $480 million Series D cloud AI round valued at $2.5 billion.
- Cohere – Nvidia took part in a $500 million round in June for the Toronto-based LLM provider.
- Perplexity – Backed by Nvidia since November 2023, including the latest $500 million round at $9 billion valuation.
- Poolside – Nvidia joined a $500 million round in October for the AI coding assistant valued at $3 billion.
- CoreWeave – Nvidia-backed AI cloud computing firm, shot from $2 billion to $19 billion valuation since 2023, with IPO plans.
- Together AI – Nvidia joined a $305 million Series B in February for cloud AI infrastructure.
- Sakana AI – Japanese AI startup raised $214 million Series A with Nvidia.
- Imbue – AI research lab with Nvidia-backed $200 million round.
- Waabi – Autonomous trucking, raised $200 million with Nvidia and other investors.
Other $100M+ deals
- Ayar Labs – Nvidia’s third round participation in $155 million optical interconnect investor round.
- Kore.ai – Enterprise chatbot startup raised $150 million with Nvidia on board.
- Sandbox AQ – Nvidia co-led $150 million plus from Google in AI and quantitative models startup.
- Hippocratic AI – Healthcare LLM startup raised $141 million in January with Nvidia participation.
- Weka – AI data management platform raised $140 million including Nvidia in May.
- Runway – Nvidia-backed $141 million round in June 2023 for generative AI tools.
- Bright Machines – Nvidia joined $126 million Series C smart robotics round in June 2024.
- Enfabrica – Nvidia invested $125 million into networking chipmaker in September 2023.
Nvidia’s AI investments fuel its dominance beyond just chip sales — seeding the entire AI startup ecosystem. The company is clearly placing big bets where future AI tech takes shape.
Editor’s note: Nvidia is not a backer of Safe Superintelligence or Vast Data’s Series E round.
