Nvidia at the forefront of AI boom: record investments in 2025

Staff Report: PNN

Amid the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia, the US-based chip manufacturer, has seen the most dramatic rise. Since the launch of ChatGPT, the company’s revenue, profits, and cash reserves have surged unprecedentedly over the past three years. This success has also impacted the stock market—Nvidia’s market value is now approximately $4.6 trillion.

As the world’s leading manufacturer of high-performance GPUs, Nvidia has leveraged this success to invest more than ever before in technology and AI-focused startups. In 2025, the company achieved a new milestone in its investment activities.

According to market research firm PitchBook, Nvidia directly participated in nearly 67 venture capital deals this year, surpassing 54 deals in the entire year of 2024. This does not include Nvidia’s corporate venture arm, NVentures, which made 30 separate investments during the same period.

Nvidia stated that the primary objective of its corporate investments is not solely financial gain; rather, it aims to support startups capable of bringing transformative changes to the AI sector and creating new markets.

The investment list includes some of the world’s top AI companies. OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Mistral AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Inflection, Cursor, and Reflection AI have recently raised more than a billion dollars, with Nvidia acting as either a direct or strategic investor.

Notably, Nvidia’s first major investment in OpenAI came in 2024. Similarly, the company has invested multiple times in Elon Musk’s xAI and France-based Mistral AI. A major purpose behind these investments is to increase demand for Nvidia’s own chips and infrastructure for AI model development.

Besides AI model creation, Nvidia has invested in data centers, autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, and AI cloud services. Significant investments in companies like Crusoe, Enscale, CoreWeave, Lambda, Figure AI, Wave, and Neuro reflect this strategy.

Additionally, Nvidia has a presence in startups focusing on healthcare, nuclear fusion, coding assistants, AI search engines, and media production tools. Analysts observe that Nvidia is no longer just a chip manufacturer; through startup investments, it effectively occupies a central position in the global AI ecosystem. Many of these startups are likely to depend on Nvidia’s hardware and technology in the future.

Consequently, Nvidia’s influence in the AI industry is becoming increasingly profound and expansive, which may significantly impact the balance of power in the tech world in the coming years.