Great companies thrive on stories. Sid Siddeek, who runs NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, knows this well.
Siddeek still remembers one of his first jobs, schlepping presentation materials from one investor meeting to another, helping the startup’s CEO and management team get the story out while working from a trailer that “shook when the door opened,” he said.
That CEO was Jensen Huang. The startup was NVIDIA.
Siddeek, who has worked as an investor and an entrepreneur, knows how important it is to find the right people to share your company’s story with early on, whether they’re customers or partners, employees or investors.
It’s this very principle that underpins NVIDIA’s multifaceted approach to investing in the next wave of innovation, a strategy also championed by Vishal Bhagwati, who leads NVIDIA’s corporate development efforts.
It’s an effort that’s resulted in more than two dozen investments so far this year, accelerating as the pace of innovation in AI and accelerated computing quickens.
NVIDIA’s Three-Pronged Strategy to Support the AI Ecosystem
There are three ways that NVIDIA invests in the ecosystem, driving the transformation unleashed by accelerated computing. First, through NVIDIA’s corporate investments, overseen by Bhagwati. Second, through NVentures, our venture capital arm, led by Siddeek. And finally, through NVIDIA Inception, our vehicle for supporting startups and connecting them to venture capital.
There couldn’t be a better time to support companies harnessing NVIDIA technologies. AI alone could contribute more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to PwC.
And if you’re working in AI and accelerated computing right now, NVIDIA stands ready to help. Developers across every industry in every country are building accelerated computing applications. And they’re just getting going.
The result is a collection of companies that are advancing the story of AI every day. They include Cohere, CoreWeave, Hugging Face, Inflection, Inceptive and many more. And we’re right alongside them.
“Partnering with NVIDIA is a game-changer,” said Ed Mehr, CEO of Machina Labs. “Their unmatched expertise will supercharge our AI and simulation capabilities.”
Corporate Investments: Growing Our Ecosystem
NVIDIA’s corporate investments arm focuses on strategic collaborations. These partnerships stimulate joint innovation, enhance the NVIDIA platform and expand the ecosystem. Since the beginning of 2023, announcements have been made about 14 investments.
These target companies include Ayar Labs, specializing in chip-to-chip optical connectivity, and Hugging Face, a hub for advanced AI models.
The portfolio also includes next-generation enterprise solutions. Databricks offers an industry-leading data platform for machine learning, while Cohere provides enterprise automation through AI. Other notable companies are Recursion, Kore.ai and Utilidata, each contributing unique solutions in drug discovery, conversational AI and smart electricity grids, respectively.
Consumer services are another investment focus. Inflection is crafting a personal AI for creative expression, while Runway serves as a platform for art and creativity through generative AI.
The investment strategy extends to autonomous machines. Ready Robotics is developing an operating system for industrial robotics, and Skydio builds autonomous drones.
NVIDIA’s most recent investments are in cloud service providers like CoreWeave. These platforms cater to a diverse clientele, from startups to Fortune 500 companies seeking to build next-generation AI services.
NVentures: Investing Alongside Entrepreneurs
Through NVentures, we support innovators who are deeply relevant to NVIDIA. We aim to generate strong financial returns and expand the ecosystem by funding companies that use our platforms across a wide range of industries.
To date, NVentures has made 19 investments in companies in healthcare, manufacturing and other key verticals. Some examples of our portfolio companies include:
- Genesis Therapeutics, Inceptive, Terray, Charm, Evozyne, Generate, Superluminal: revolutionizing drug discovery
- Machina Labs, Seurat Technologies: disrupting industrial processes to improve manufacturing
- PassiveLogic: automating building systems with AI
- MindsDB: for developers that need to connect enterprise data to AI
- Moon Surgical: improving laparoscopic surgery with AI
- Twelve Labs: developing multimodal foundation models for video understanding
- Flywheel: accelerating medical imaging data development
- Luma AI: developers of visual and multimodal models
- Outrider: automating logistics hub operation
- Synthesia: AI Video for the enterprise
- Replicate: developer platform for open-source and custom models
All these companies are building on work being done inside and outside NVIDIA.
“NVentures has a network, not just within NVIDIA, but throughout the industry, to make sure we have access to the best technology and the best people to build all the different modules that have to come together to define the distribution and supply chain of the future,” said Andrew Smith, CEO of Outrider.
NVIDIA Inception: Supporting Startups and Connecting Them to Investors
In addition, we’re continuing to support startups with NVIDIA Inception. Launched in 2016, this free global program offers technology and marketing support to over 17,000 startups across multiple industries and over 125 countries.
And, as part of Inception, we’re partnering with venture capitalists through our VC Alliance, a program that offers benefits to our valued network of venture capital firms, including connecting startups with potential investors.
Partnering With Innovators in Every Industry
Whatever our relationship, whether as a partner or investor, we can offer companies unique forms of support.
NVIDIA has the technology. NVIDIA has the richest set of libraries and the deepest understanding of the frameworks needed to optimize training and inference pipelines.
We have the go-to-market skills. NVIDIA has tremendous field sales, solution architect and developer relations organizations with a long track record of working with the most innovative startups and the largest companies in the world.
We know how to grow. We have people throughout our organization who are recognized leaders in their respective fields and can offer expert advice to companies of all sizes and industries.
“Partnering with NVIDIA was an easy choice,” said Victor Riparbelli, cofounder and CEO of Synthesia. “We use their hardware, benefit from their AI expertise and get valuable insights, allowing us to build better products faster.”
Accelerating the Greatest Breakthroughs of Our Time
In turn, these investments augment our R&D in the software, systems and semiconductors undergirding this ecosystem.
With NVIDIA’s technologies poised to accelerate the work of researchers and scientists, entrepreneurs, startups and Fortune 500 companies, finding ways to support companies that rely on our technologies— with engineering resources, marketing support and capital — is more vital than ever.
