Jensen Huang’s A.I. Bets Beyond GPUs: 10 High-Flying Startups Backed by Nvidia
Jensen Huang is best known for building the world’s dominant A.I. chipmaker. But as surging demand for GPUs has turned Nvidia into a $4.5 trillion powerhouse, the company has quietly expanded its influence far beyond hardware, pouring billions into startups across the A.I. ecosystem. Today, nearly every major player in the industry, from OpenAI to xAI, has some financial link to the Santa Clara, Calif.-based giant.
Over the past two decades, Nvidia has participated in 177 funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. Most of that activity has come since 2023, tracking the explosive rise of generative A.I. The tally does not include NVentures, Nvidia’s formal venture arm, which has made an additional 83 investments.
Many of Nvidia’s largest checks have gone to its own customers, raising questions about so-called circular funding arrangements that could artificially bolster perceptions of demand. Huang has dismissed that criticism, arguing that Nvidia’s contributions represent only a small fraction of the capital required by leading A.I. developers.
The pace is accelerating. In just the first two months of 2026, Nvidia has joined 11 funding rounds. They include a $1.5 billion raise by Wayve, the London-based robotaxi startup, and a $1 billion round for World Labs, the model-building venture founded by Fei-Fei Li. Most recently, Nvidia participated in a staggering $110 billion funding round unveiled by OpenAI.
Here are the 10 most notable A.I. startups backed by Nvidia:
OpenAI, valued at $840 billion
Nvidia and OpenAI formalized their financial ties in October 2024, when the chipmaker joined a $6.6 billion funding round. A year later, Nvidia pledged to invest up to $100 billion over time, while OpenAI signaled plans to purchase as much as 10 gigawatts of Nvidia compute capacity.
That sweeping commitment was never finalized. Instead, Nvidia participated in OpenAI’s latest $110 billion fundraising with a $30 billion investment. The round, which also includes backers such as Amazon and SoftBank, values the maker of ChatGPT at $840 billion and is expected to bring in additional investors.
Anthropic, valued at $380 billion
Led by Dario Amodei, Anthropic has positioned itself as a leading enterprise A.I. player and a direct challenger to OpenAI. The company was most recently valued at $380 billion after raising $30 billion, a round that included part of Nvidia’s previously announced commitment to invest up to $10 billion.
In return, Anthropic plans to purchase up to 1 gigawatt of Nvidia GPU capacity. “This is a dream come true for us,” Jensen Huang said in November. “We’ve admired the work of Anthropic and Dario for a long time.”
xAI, valued at $250 billion
Nvidia’s ties to Elon Musk’s xAI span investing, hardware supply and joint infrastructure projects. The companies are collaborating on a planned 500-megawatt data center in Saudi Arabia alongside Humain.
Nvidia first invested in xAI’s $6 billion Series C in 2024 and later joined its $20 billion Series E in January, shortly before xAI was acquired by SpaceX. “The only regret is that I didn’t give him more money,” Huang told CNBC last October. “Almost everything that Elon is a part of, you really want to be a part of as well.”
Safe Superintelligence, valued at $32 billion
Founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, Safe Superintelligence has kept its research largely secret, focusing on advanced A.I. rather than consumer products. Nvidia joined a $2 billion funding round last April.
Huang has long praised Sutskever’s role in co-developing AlexNet, calling him one of the figures behind the “big bang of deep learning” during a 2024 commencement speech at California Institute of Technology.
Anysphere, valued at $29.3 billion
Nvidia is both an investor in Anysphere and a heavy user of its Cursor coding tool. About 30,000 Nvidia engineers rely on the product, known for A.I.-assisted “vibe coding,” which the company says has tripled coding output internally.
Cursor is “incredibly useful,” Huang said in a CNBC interview, calling it his “favorite enterprise A.I. service.” Nvidia backed Anysphere’s $2.3 billion Series D last fall.
Thinking Machines Lab, valued at $12 billion
Founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Thinking Machines Lab raised $2 billion in a seed round backed by Nvidia. Murati recruited talent from Google, Meta, Mistral AI and OpenAI, and the company has launched tools that let developers fine-tune models for specialized tasks.
Recent reports, however, suggest internal tensions, with several staff members departing for OpenAI.
Mistral AI, valued at $13.8 billion
Nvidia most recently joined Mistral’s $2 billion Series C last September, adding to prior investments in 2023 and 2024. The Paris-based startup aims to build a European alternative to U.S. leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Its partnership with Nvidia has helped scale multilingual and multimodal models. “Super meaningful,” CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC, saying the collaboration allows Mistral “to go faster and to offer the best services.”
Crusoe, valued at $10 billion
Crusoe is emerging as a key infrastructure partner for OpenAI’s Stargate project. Nvidia backed Crusoe’s $600 million Series D in 2024 and its $1.4 billion Series E in 2025, reinforcing its position in the A.I. data center buildout.
Reflection AI, valued at $8 billion
Following the rise of China’s DeepSeek, New York-based Reflection AI is pitching itself as a Western counterpart focused on advanced, cost-efficient models. Nvidia wrote the largest check in the company’s $2 billion Series B last October, contributing $800 million.
Inflection AI, valued at $4 billion
Co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Mustafa Suleyman, Inflection AI launched in 2023 with its chatbot Pi and quickly raised $1.3 billion in a round led by Nvidia.
In 2024, Microsoft paid $650 million to license Inflection’s models and hire much of its team, including Suleyman, who now leads Microsoft’s consumer A.I. division.