Jensen Huang "Spends Big" to Set a Record as NVIDIA's Super AI Empire Rises, but Leaves China Out of the Game

On October 13th, a report released by PitchBook, a globally renowned investment tracking institution, showed that as of October 9th, NVIDIA had participated in 50 AI - related financing rounds this year, exceeding the total of 48 rounds in the whole year of 2024.

In 2023, NVIDIA participated in 34 financing rounds, and in the four years before 2023, it participated in a total of 38 rounds. It should be noted that these investments do not include those of its corporate venture capital fund, NVentures. NVentures has participated in 21 transactions so far this year, compared with 24 transactions last year and only 2 in 2022.

Specifically, since 2023, a total of 31 companies in which NVIDIA participated in financing had single - round financing exceeding $100 million. Among the companies invested in by NVIDIA in 2025, a total of 7 companies had single - round financing exceeding $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.1 billion), 8 companies received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing, and 5 companies had financing just over $100 million. Among them, the valuations of OpenAI, xAI, Mistral AI, and Figure AI, which received investments from NVIDIA, have all exceeded $10 billion.

According to the statistics of Zhidx, among the fields to which these companies belong, the most are related to large models, with a total of 14 companies, followed by 7 companies related to AI infrastructure, 3 and 2 companies are related to autonomous driving and humanoid robots respectively, and the remaining 5 companies are related to quantum computing, nuclear fusion, etc.

Segmented situation of NVIDIA's AI investment fields (companies with single - round financing exceeding $100 million from 2023 to date)

Geographically, the vast majority of the companies invested in by NVIDIA are American companies, with a small number of British, French, and Japanese companies.

Here are the details of 31 startups in which NVIDIA participated in financing exceeding $100 million (approximately RMB 700 million) since 2023, arranged in descending order of financing amount:

01. 7 companies with single - round financing exceeding $1 billion, 4 of which received consecutive investments from NVIDIA

Seven companies that received investments from NVIDIA had single - round financing exceeding $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.1 billion). Among them, top - tier large - model companies such as OpenAI and xAI had single - round financing exceeding $6 billion (approximately RMB 42.9 billion).

This year, NVIDIA newly invested in three startups: Reflection AI, an open - source model research startup; Thinking Machines Lab, a multimodal AI system startup; and Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company. The first two were founded by a former DeepMind researcher and a former OpenAI chief technology officer respectively, and the third startup has signed large - scale AI infrastructure orders with OpenAI and Microsoft. The remaining four companies have received multiple investments from NVIDIA.

1. OpenAI: In October 2024, NVIDIA made its first investment in OpenAI and contributed $100 million (approximately RMB 700 million) to its huge financing of $6.6 billion (approximately RMB 47.1 billion). At that time, OpenAI's valuation reached $157 billion (approximately RMB 71.4 trillion).

In September this year, NVIDIA and OpenAI announced that they had reached a strategic partnership: OpenAI will deploy at least 10GW (10 gigawatts, i.e., 10 million kilowatts) of NVIDIA systems, including millions of GPUs, and NVIDIA will continuously invest in OpenAI as these computing powers are gradually launched, with a maximum total investment of $100 billion (approximately RMB 7.12 trillion).

From left to right: Sam Altman, co - founder and CEO of OpenAI; Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA; Greg Brockman, co - founder and president of OpenAI (Source: X)

2. xAI: In December 2024, NVIDIA participated in the $6 billion (approximately RMB 42.8 billion) financing of xAI, a company under Elon Musk. At the beginning of this month, according to Bloomberg, xAI was reported to be conducting a $20 billion (approximately RMB 142.8 billion) financing round, and NVIDIA's equity investment in this round was as high as $2 billion (approximately RMB 14.3 billion). xAI will purchase NVIDIA GPUs through a special - purpose entity and then lease these chips for five years.

From left to right: Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA; Elon Musk, founder of xAI (Source: X)

3. Mistral AI: In September this year, Mistral AI, a French large - model unicorn, announced that it had received €1.7 billion (approximately RMB 14 billion) in Series C financing, and its post - investment valuation reached €11.7 billion (approximately RMB 96.6 billion). This was NVIDIA's third investment in Mistral AI.

Mistral AI is a French startup founded in 2023 by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, focusing on open - source model development. NVIDIA participated in Mistral AI's seed - round and Series B financing. Mistral AI completed a €105 million (approximately RMB 870 million) seed - round financing in June 2023; in June 2024, it raised $640 million (approximately RMB 4.6 billion) at a valuation of $6 billion (approximately RMB 42.9 billion).

From left to right: Guillaume Lample, co - founder of Mistral AI; Arthur Mensch, co - founder of Mistral AI; Timothée Lacroix, co - founder of Mistral AI (Source: Mistral AI official website)

4. Reflection AI: This month, NVIDIA led the $2 billion (approximately RMB 14.3 billion) financing of AI startup Reflection AI. The latest valuation of this startup reached $8 billion (approximately RMB 57.1 billion), nearly 15 times its valuation of $545 million (approximately RMB 3.89 billion) in the previous round seven months ago. Reflection AI was founded in March 2024 by two former DeepMind researchers and positions itself as building an "American open - frontier AI laboratory". In the future, it may compete with closed - source institutions such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as open - source teams such as DeepSeek and Tongyi Qianwen.

From left to right: Misha Laskin, co - founder of Reflection AI; Ioannis Antonoglou, co - founder of Reflection AI (Source: Reflection AI official website)

5. Thinking Machines Lab: In July this year, AI startup Thinking Machines Lab announced that it had completed $2 billion (approximately RMB 14.3 billion) in seed - round financing, and its latest valuation reached $12 billion (approximately RMB 85.7 billion).

The founder of Thinking Machines Lab is Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI. It was founded in February 2025, and in less than five months, it set a record for the largest - scale seed - round financing at that time. The company focuses on customized enterprise AI.

From left to right: Sam Altman, co - founder and CEO of OpenAI; Mira Murati, former chief technology officer of OpenAI (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

6. Nscale: On September 25th this year, Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company, announced that it had raised $1.1 billion (approximately RMB 7.8 billion) in Series B financing. On October 1st, it announced that it had completed $433 million (approximately RMB 3.1 billion) in Pre - Series C SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) financing, in which NVIDIA participated in both rounds.

Nscale was spun off from Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy in 2023 and has now become an important partner of Microsoft and OpenAI.

In July this year, Nscale, OpenAI and other companies announced the launch of Stargate Norway, a project to build a facility in Norway powered entirely by renewable energy, which will deliver 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026. In September this year, Microsoft announced a plan to invest $30 billion (approximately RMB 214.2 billion) in the UK by 2028. This investment includes building the "largest supercomputer in the UK" in cooperation with Nscale, which will have more than 23,000 GPUs.

Jensen Huang visits Nscale (Source: Nscale official website)

7. Figure AI: In September this year, NVIDIA participated in Figure AI's Series C financing of over $1 billion (approximately RMB 7.1 billion). The latest valuation of this humanoid robot startup reached $39 billion (approximately RMB 278.5 billion).

Figure AI was founded in 2022, focusing on the research and development of general - purpose humanoid robots. At the beginning of this month, it released its third - generation humanoid robot, Figure 03, which can perform a variety of household tasks, such as watering flowers, washing dishes, delivering meals, wiping tables, and playing games with pet dogs. NVIDIA first invested in Figure AI in February 2024, and at that time, the company raised $675 million (approximately RMB 4.8 billion) at a valuation of $2.6 billion (approximately RMB 18.6 billion).

The newly released humanoid robot Figure 03 of Figure AI (Source: Figure AI official website)

02. 8 startups received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing, covering nuclear fusion, autonomous driving, and humanoid robots

Eight startups received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing, including Figure AI, a top - tier humanoid robot company.

1. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS): In August 2025, NVIDIA participated in the $863 million (approximately RMB 6.2 billion) financing of nuclear fusion energy startup CFS, and its post - investment valuation reached $3 billion (approximately RMB 21.4 billion).

CFS was founded in 2018. It is an American fusion power company spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. The company is currently building a prototype reactor called Sparc in the suburbs of Boston. It is expected to start the device later next year and achieve scientific breakeven in 2027.

The prototype reactor of Sparc (Source: CFS official website)

2. Cohere: In August this year, Canadian AI unicorn Cohere officially announced that it had received $500 million (approximately RMB 3.6 billion) in new financing, and its valuation increased from $5.5 billion (approximately RMB 39.3 billion) to $6.8 billion (approximately RMB 48.6 billion). Cohere was founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, a co - author of the Transformer paper, and it focuses on providing AI applications that can be privately deployed and solve practical problems in vertical scenarios for enterprises.

NVIDIA first invested in Cohere in 2023 and participated in the startup's $500 million (approximately RMB 3.6 billion) financing in June last year.

Cohere was founded by three genius teenagers. It was initiated by Aidan Gomez, a co - author of the Transformer paper. CTO Ivan Zhang is a classmate of Gomez in the same department. He founded the AI research institution FOR.ai in 2017, which is now renamed Cohere For AI. Chief Scientist Nick Frosst graduated from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto in 2015 and was a member of the team of "one of the three giants of deep learning", Geoffrey Hinton, during his tenure at Google Brain.