Nvidia has been accumulating power in the AI ecosystem in a way that probably few expected a few years ago. The interesting part is not just that it controls the GPU market, but how it has used its massive profits to get directly involved in investing in tech startups. Since 2023, the company has been involved in virtually all major AI venture capital rounds.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2025, it participated in nearly 67 startup investment deals, surpassing the 54 in 2024. Not to mention NVentures, its corporate venture arm, which closed 30 deals in 2025 compared to just one in 2022. The strategy is clear: Nvidia wants to be everywhere AI is being built.

Looking at the biggest rounds, OpenAI was one of the first. Nvidia invested $100 million in October 2024 in a $6.6 billion round that valued the company at $157 billion. But the real story is that they later announced plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI long-term, though they clarified that there’s no guarantee it will be completed. Clearly, this is more of a strategic bet than a traditional investment.

Anthropic will receive up to $10 billion according to the 2025 agreement, showing the level of commitment. Cursor, the coding assistant, raised $2.3 billion in November with Nvidia as a strategic investor. Elon Musk’s xAI secured $6 billion in December 2024 with Nvidia’s participation, and the company plans to invest another $2 billion in the upcoming $20 billion round.

What’s fascinating is that Nvidia isn’t just investing in generative AI startups. It’s also heavily betting on infrastructure. Crusoe, which builds data centers, raised $1.4 billion in October. Nscale, which is building data centers in the UK and Norway for OpenAI’s Stargate project, secured an additional $1.1 billion plus $433 million more. Reflection AI, which competes with DeepSeek by offering open-source LLMs, raised $2 billion. Thinking Machines Lab raised $2 billion in July.

In autonomous driving, Wayve received $1.05 billion in May 2024 with Nvidia involved, and they’re expected to invest another $500 million. Robotics startup Figure AI raised over $1 billion in September, valued at $39 billion.

There are many other rounds of hundreds of millions as well. Commonwealth Fusion secured $863 million, Cohere raised $500 million in its Series D, Perplexity reached an $18 billion valuation with Nvidia backing in multiple rounds. Poolside, another coding assistant, raised $500 million. Black Forest Labs, behind the image generation model Flux, closed $300 million in December.

What you see is that Nvidia is building a complete ecosystem. It’s not just about gaining exposure to promising AI startups. It’s positioning itself as the central hub of the value chain: hardware, software, infrastructure, applications. Every investment in startups makes them more integrated into the system.

The question is whether this is sustainable or if they will eventually clash with regulators. But for now, Nvidia is writing the script for what AI-era tech startup investing should look like.