NVIDIA Invested $1 Billion in AI Companies Last Year... 10x Increase in 2 Years

More Investment Deals Than MS and Amazon

American semiconductor company Nvidia, which leads the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market, invested more than $1 billion (approximately 1.4718 trillion KRW) in AI startups and others last year.

According to corporate disclosures and corporate information firm Dealroom, Nvidia invested a total of $1 billion in 50 startup funding rounds and mergers and acquisitions last year. This amount is more than 10 times the investment in 2022 and represents a 15% increase compared to 2023.

Most of the transactions were made with core AI companies that have high demand for computing infrastructure. Nvidia also invested in companies that purchase Nvidia chips.

The number of investments also increased. Although Nvidia's participation in funding rounds is less than Google's, it has surged in the past two years, surpassing Microsoft (MS) and Amazon.

The surge in Nvidia's corporate transactions is due to Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) leading the AI chip market. Last year, Nvidia's stock price soared more than 170%. Its market capitalization surpassed $3 trillion in June last year.

Recently, Nvidia made strategic investments in Elon Musk's Tesla CEO's AI company xAI, along with competitor AMD. It also participated in funding rounds for OpenAI, Cohere, Mistral, and Perplexity.

Start-up acquisitions have also increased. This year, Nvidia acquired Run:ai, and AI software companies Nebulon, OctoAI, and BrevDev. According to Dealroom, Nvidia acquired more companies last year than in the previous four years combined.

The investment targets are diverse, including medical technology, search engines, gaming, drones, semiconductors, traffic management, logistics, data storage, and humanoid robots.

However, the expansion of Nvidia's corporate transactions raises concerns about Nvidia's influence in the AI industry amid increasing antitrust pressures on Nvidia in the United States, Europe, and China.

William Kovacic, former commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), said, "Competition authorities want to investigate whether dominant companies making large investments are trying to achieve monopolies." He added that investments in the customer base could also be beneficial.

Nvidia explained, "The company is committed to growing the industry ecosystem, supporting excellent companies, and improving platforms for everyone," adding, "We compete and win regardless of investments."