Nvidia’s $100B OpenAI Stake Highlights Diverse Portfolio

Nvidia is making significant strategic moves, recently announcing a proposed $100 billion investment into OpenAI. This potential deal underscores the increasing scope of the chipmaker’s investment portfolio, a trend accelerated since the rise of generative AI in 2022. The investment, if finalized, would represent Nvidia’s largest to date.

This announcement follows a recent $5 billion commitment to Intel, a former rival, as well as previously announced plans for a $500 million investment in self-driving car startup Wayve and a £500 million (approximately $667.7 million) investment into U.K. cloud provider Nscale.

These moves underscore Nvidia’s ascent to a position of considerable influence within Silicon Valley. By providing capital and, more critically, access to its highly sought-after artificial intelligence chips, Nvidia is securing equity stakes and valuable insights into the trajectories of promising AI startups.

In August, a financial filing revealed Nvidia’s $4.33 billion in publicly traded holdings, including stakes in companies such as Applied Digital, Arm, CoreWeave, Nebius Group, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and WeRide. At the end of July, Nvidia valued its nonmarketable equity securities at $3.8 billion, a substantial increase from $1.8 billion the previous year.

While the majority of Nvidia’s portfolio companies have strategic connections to its core business, such as developing complementary technologies, providing rented access to its chips, or utilizing them for AI, enterprise software, and robotics, Nvidia maintains that these investments do not necessitate exclusive technology adoption.

“We do not require any of the companies we invest in to use Nvidia technology,” a company spokesperson stated. This approach acknowledges the competitive landscape and the varied needs of the AI ecosystem. For instance, despite Nvidia’s involvement in funding rounds for enterprise AI startup Cohere, the company announced it will leverage AMD chips alongside Nvidia’s.

The launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in 2022 brought widespread recognition to the importance of Nvidia’s GPUs. Since then, Nvidia’s market capitalization has surged from approximately $420 billion to around $4.3 trillion, with annual revenue increasing by 383% from $27 billion in fiscal 2023 to $130.5 billion in the fiscal year concluded in January.

Parallel to this growth, Nvidia’s investment activity has intensified. According to a CNBC analysis of PitchBook data, Nvidia made 16 investments in 2022. This number rose to 41 in 2024. As of the present date in 2025, the chipmaker has already executed 51 such deals, exclusive of the OpenAI commitment.

While Nvidia is typically among multiple investors in venture capital transactions, the sheer volume of its venture and public equity investments highlights its pivotal role in shaping the AI ecosystem. Neuberger Berman analyst Jamie Zakalik points to Nvidia’s strong cash flow and the current regulatory landscape as factors driving these investments. The OpenAI deal presents a “win-win” scenario, allowing Nvidia to deploy capital while influencing the deployment of AI using its chips.

“Nvidia has a lot of capital that they don’t necessarily have a ton of avenues to do stuff with,” Zakalik said, suggesting strategic investments are a prudent option.

According to Alden Abbott, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, regulators are less likely to be concerned with “vertical” investments, where a company like Nvidia invests in a supplier or customer. However, investments involving exclusive supply contracts would face greater scrutiny, which are less likely to exist given the rapid pace of development in the AI industry.

These investments provide insights into potential future acquisitions by Nvidia. The chipmaker acquired CentML after participating in its 2023 seed round and invested in Enfabrica before acquiring its CEO and licensing its technology for $900 million, as CNBC reported.

Nvidia’s investments encompass a wide spectrum of technologies, spanning chips, biotech, robotics, and self-driving cars. Its portfolio includes some of the leading AI model companies, requiring extensive processing power provided by Nvidia’s chips to handle enormous datasets and develop advanced AI models.

Nvidia has invested an undisclosed amount in OpenAI across multiple funding rounds. It participated in a 1.7 billion euro ($2 billion) round into French AI startup Mistral AI in September, contributed to a $100 million round for Cohere in August, and participated in multiple rounds raising $307 million for Runway AI.

Nvidia reportedly participated in a $2 billion round for Safe Superintelligence, founded by former OpenAI researcher Ilya Sutskever, as well as a $2 billion July funding round for Thinking Machine Labs, led by former OpenAI COO Mira Murati.

Some of Nvidia’s investments have already yielded exits. Scale AI, a company specializing in data cleaning and preparation for AI startups, entered into a $14.3 billion hiring and licensing agreement with Meta, resulting in its CEO and other employees joining Meta.

Nvidia has a 7% stake in CoreWeave, a cloud provider offering access to Nvidia’s chips. CoreWeave had a successful IPO earlier this year.

CoreWeave competes and partners with major cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon in the neo-cloud space. CoreWeave recently disclosed a $6.3 billion order from Nvidia.

Nvidia also participated in Lambda Labs’ $480 million Series D round.

Among Nvidia’s notable investments are those in companies developing quantum computers, a technology with the potential to significantly enhance AI development. Nvidia’s chips are used by these companies to simulate their still-theoretical quantum computers.

These investments followed CEO Jensen Huang’s apology at an Nvidia conference after his remarks about the timeline for quantum computing negatively impacted the stocks of companies in that sector.

Earlier this month, Nvidia’s venture capital arm participated in a $1 billion round for PsiQuantum and provided early-stage funding for Quantinuum in August.

Nvidia’s involvement as an investor can enhance a company’s appeal to other investors. In recent years, after Nvidia has revealed stakes in public companies, investors have bought up shares, even those with only tangential connections to AI. Intel’s stock, for example, rose 18% on the day Nvidia announced its investment.