NVentures (Nvidia)
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NVentures is the corporate venture-capital arm of Nvidia, the dominant supplier of graphics processors used to train and run artificial-intelligence models. Formalized as a distinct unit around 2022 and 2023 and led by Mohamed "Sid" Siddeek, NVentures invests directly from Nvidia's balance sheet rather than from an external limited-partner fund. Over a roughly three-year stretch from 2023 to 2026 it grew from a handful of deals into one of the most active and consequential technology investors in the world, backing a long roster of generative AI model labs, cloud providers, robotics companies, and chip and infrastructure startups. Its rise has been inseparable from the broader AI buildout: many of the companies NVentures funds are also large buyers of Nvidia chips, an overlap that has drawn growing scrutiny over so-called circular financing and related-party arrangements. NVentures should be distinguished from Nvidia's much larger strategic equity stakes and anchor commitments, such as the multibillion-dollar arrangements with OpenAI and Anthropic, which are made by the parent company rather than by the venture group.
NVentures is wholly owned by and funded from Nvidia. Unlike a traditional venture firm that raises capital from outside limited partners, the unit deploys money from the company's own balance sheet, which by late 2025 stood behind a corporation valued in the multitrillion-dollar range. That structure lets NVentures pursue strategic returns from companies that benefit from accelerated computing without the fundraising cycles or fixed fund sizes of an independent firm. Siddeek, who carries the title corporate vice president and head of NVentures, rejoined Nvidia in 2021 after roughly 17 years away, with prior stints that included work at SoftBank's Vision Fund.
Nvidia describes the group's mandate as backing "game changers and market makers," and frames its check-writing as a way to expand the ecosystem of developers and enterprises building on Nvidia platforms while also seeking financial returns. The unit emphasizes that it brings more than capital, including technical collaboration and access to Nvidia's developer and customer network. Its stated focus areas span generative AI and large language models, enterprise AI, autonomous machines and robotics, drug discovery and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and what the company calls sustainable or accelerated computing. NVentures typically writes checks from a few million dollars up to tens of millions and usually joins as a participant or co-investor in a syndicate rather than leading the round.
Nvidia made venture-style investments for years, but the dedicated NVentures brand and team coalesced in the early 2020s. The unit traces its first commitment to September 2022, and the NVentures name became publicly visible in early 2023 as Nvidia ramped its activity alongside the surge of interest in generative AI that followed the launch of ChatGPT. Siddeek has run the group throughout this period.
The early portfolio leaned heavily toward science and industrial applications of AI agents and accelerated computing, including drug-discovery companies such as Genesis Therapeutics, Inceptive, Terray, and Generate, manufacturing startups such as Machina Labs and Seurat Technologies, and AI media and video companies such as Twelve Labs, Luma AI, and Synthesia. From this base the unit broadened sharply, adding stakes in frontier model labs, autonomous-driving systems, cloud-infrastructure providers, and quantum and fusion ventures as Nvidia's own ambitions in those areas expanded.
The growth in deal volume has been steep. NVentures recorded a single disclosed deal in 2022, then accelerated each year afterward, reaching roughly 30 deals in 2025 according to data compiled by Crunchbase. Counting both NVentures and Nvidia's direct corporate investing, the company participated in about 54 venture deals in 2024 and roughly 67 in 2025, figures that placed Nvidia among the most active corporate investors in technology.
The dollar totals grew even faster because of a small number of very large rounds. PitchBook data cited in late 2025 and early 2026 reporting put combined Nvidia and NVentures activity at about 117 investments totaling roughly $62.24 billion across 2024 and 2025, compared with 46 investments totaling about $6.09 billion in the prior two years. The roughly tenfold jump in deployed capital reflects Nvidia's willingness to anchor enormous financings for model labs and data-center operators, a category distinct from the smaller venture checks that characterize most NVentures deals.
NVentures has remained selective about leading. In 2025 Nvidia disclosed a lead role in only about five rounds, roughly one in eight of the investments it backed, more often partnering with established venture firms and joining syndicates led by others. Notable lead or co-lead positions in 2025 included a roughly $600 million round for the quantum-computing company Quantinuum, a $300 million Series D for the Israeli enterprise model lab AI21 Labs, and a co-led $135 million Series B for the robotics-software company Skild AI.
NVentures and its parent have backed a wide span of AI companies, from foundation-model labs to specialized cloud and robotics startups. The table below lists representative deals; figures reflect the size of the overall round and Nvidia's role as reported by the companies and by outlets including TechCrunch, CNBC, and Crunchbase. Many of these are participations rather than lead investments, and several of the largest commitments, such as those to OpenAI and Anthropic, are strategic moves by Nvidia the corporation rather than NVentures venture checks.
| Company | Round and year | Nvidia / NVentures role |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | ~$6.6B round, 2024; later equity stake in 2026 | Strategic participant; later large equity stake |
| Anthropic | Strategic partnership, November 2025 | Up to $10B strategic commitment |
| CoreWeave | $221M round, 2023; ongoing stake | Investor and major customer / supplier |
| Mistral AI | ~1.7B-euro round, 2025 | Participant |
| Reflection AI | $130M Series A, 2024; later $2B round | Participant via NVentures |
| Wayve | $1.05B round, 2024 | Participant |
| Figure AI | $675M Series B, 2024; $1B+ Series C, 2025 | Participant |
| Nscale | ~$1.1B round, 2025 | Participant |
| xAI | ~$6B round, 2024 | Participant |
| Scale AI | $1B round, 2024 | Co-investor |
| Cohere | $500M Series D, 2024 | Participant |
| Crusoe | $1.4B Series E, 2024 | Participant |
| Together AI | $305M Series B, 2025 | Participant |
| Quantinuum | ~$600M round, 2025 | Lead via NVentures |
| AI21 Labs | $300M Series D, 2025 | Lead via NVentures |
Beyond these, Nvidia and NVentures have backed names including Inflection (a 2023 round in which Nvidia was a lead), Thinking Machines Lab, Cursor maker Anysphere, Perplexity, Poolside, Lambda, Black Forest Labs, Runway, Sakana AI, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and Skild AI, among many others. The breadth illustrates a thesis that touches nearly every layer of the AI stack that consumes Nvidia silicon.
The strategic logic of NVentures is straightforward: by funding startups that build on its chips, Nvidia helps seed and accelerate demand for its own products while positioning itself to share in the upside of the companies it enables. Nvidia executives have argued the strategy augments the company's own research and extends its reach into emerging applications of accelerated computing. Critics counter that the same overlap creates a feedback loop in which Nvidia helps finance the very customers who then buy its chips, potentially flattering demand signals.
This concern, often labeled circular financing or vendor financing, intensified through 2025 and into 2026 as Nvidia struck a series of large arrangements that combined investment with compute purchases. The most prominent involved OpenAI: in September 2025 Nvidia announced a letter of intent to invest up to $100 billion progressively as OpenAI deployed gigawatts of Nvidia systems. That figure was never finalized as announced. Nvidia's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, said in December 2025 that no definitive agreement had been reached, and the company's securities filings cautioned there was no assurance the investment would be completed on the expected terms. What ultimately closed was a roughly $30 billion Nvidia equity stake, reported as part of an OpenAI funding round of around $110 billion announced in late February 2026. A separate November 2025 deal saw Nvidia commit up to $10 billion to Anthropic alongside a $5 billion investment from Microsoft, with Anthropic committing to large Azure compute purchases, a structure that critics again read as money flowing in a loop among interdependent parties.
The relationship with cloud provider CoreWeave drew similar attention. Nvidia held a stake in CoreWeave, supplied it chips, and also agreed to purchase cloud capacity from it, while CoreWeave in turn signed large contracts with OpenAI. Skeptics, including the investor Michael Burry and short-seller Jim Chanos, compared the web of equity, supply, and purchase commitments to the vendor financing of the late-1990s telecom bubble, with Burry likening Nvidia's role to that of Cisco at the turn of the millennium and questioning whether complex financing was obscuring how Nvidia hardware was funded and held across balance sheets.
Nvidia pushed back forcefully. In November 2025 it circulated a memo to analysts, later published in full by the research firm Bernstein, that named Burry directly and argued its strategic investments amounted to only a small fraction of its revenue and that AI startups raised the bulk of their capital from outside investors. The company maintains that its venture and strategic activity reflects genuine ecosystem growth rather than manufactured demand. The debate remained unresolved as of mid-2026, with NVentures continuing to invest at a brisk pace while observers watched whether the AI buildout would justify the capital flowing through Nvidia and the companies it backs.