According to estimates, Nvidia was involved in 35 deals in 2023, nearly six times more than last year….

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, has been one of the most successful investors in artificial intelligence startups this year. Nvidia is looking to capitalize on its position as the dominant AI processor supplier.

NVIDIA POURS MONEY INTO DOZENS OF AI COMPANIES

The Silicon Valley-based company just said it has invested in “more than two dozen” companies this year, from large new multibillion-dollar AI platforms to smaller startups apply AI to industries such as healthcare or energy.

According to estimates by Dealroom, a platform that tracks venture capital investments, Nvidia was involved in 35 deals in 2023, nearly six times more than last year.

That makes the chipmaker the most active large-scale investor in AI in a typical year, outpacing Silicon Valley’s biggest venture funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, according to Dealroom, foreign exchange Except for small accelerators like Y Combinator where there are many smaller investments.

According to Nvidia’s latest quarterly filing, the company has invested $872 million in “unaffiliated companies” — a category the company confirmed includes NVentures and enterprise transactions — in the past nine months. month to October, more than 10 times the amount they invested in the same period last year.

“In general, for Nvidia, the number one criterion for making startup investments is suitability,” Mohamed Siddeek, head of dedicated venture capital arm NVentures, told the Financial Times.

“The portfolio is companies that use our technology, companies that depend on our technology, companies that build their businesses around our technology… I don’t We can think of a case where we invest in a company that doesn’t use Nvidia products.”

THE INVESTED STARTUPS ARE ALL CUSTOMERS OF NVIDIA

In addition to NVentures and its corporate development team, Nvidia’s portfolio now includes Inflection AI and Cohere, two of the biggest competitors to ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Other investments are in Hugging Face, a provider of data and tools for AI developers that was valued at $4.5 billion in August, and CoreWeave, a cloud infrastructure company focused on high-performance computing applications rely on chips such as Nvidia’s graphics processors.

Its most recent investment was in Mistral, the Paris-based AI startup that was valued at 2 billion euros this month.

What the companies have in common is that they are all Nvidia customers, whether using its GPU chips or software.

Nvidia’s H100 GPU has become one of the most sought-after products in Silicon Valley this year. Powerful processors help create “large language models” – the underlying foundation that powers “general AI” services like ChatGPT – training their systems much faster than using traditional server chips system.

Nvidia invested from its own balance sheet, writing checks for tens of millions of dollars. Siddeek said NVentures wants to “generate good returns” from its investments, while the corporate development team can invest for more strategic purposes. They both led rounds themselves and invested alongside venture capital firms.

“NVIDIA KNOWS MONEY WILL FINALLY GO BACK TO THEIR POCKETS”

Some startups hope that accepting investment from Nvidia will result in closer ties with the corporation. “Obviously Nvidia is a very strategic partner; startups want to be Nvidia’s top priority when they launch new chips,” said a VC who shares investments with Nvidia.

Another investor added: “The smartest go-to-market strategy is to really lock up the market…Nvidia knows the money will eventually go back to their pockets.”

Nvidia denied that it seeks special terms with startups to ensure they use its chips. “We try to be as investor-friendly as possible,” Siddeek said. We ourselves do not have any conditions.”

Inflection AI – which in June announced a $1.3 billion fundraising round led by Nvidia, Microsoft, Bill Gates and others – boasts that it has access to 22,000 H100 GPUs, thanks to the alliance with the chip manufacturer and CoreWeave. Late last year, CoreWeave said it was one of the first companies to receive a shipment of the H100, along with cloud giants Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle.

Siddeek denies that its portfolio companies enjoy preferential access to its chips. “We don’t help anyone get priority first,” he said.

 Nguồn: vneconomy.vn