Nvidia has become one of the world’s largest strategic tech backers, with the value of its equity investments soaring more than tenfold over the past year to $99 billion. The chip giant is increasingly leveraging its huge capital reserves to expand its influence across the artificial intelligence sector, according to a report from CNBC on Friday.
The company’s equity investments were valued at $99 billion as of July 26, up from roughly $7 billion a year earlier and about $2.2 billion two years ago, CNBC reported. In 2026 alone, Nvidia committed more than $40 billion to financing rounds across the AI stack.
The surge puts Nvidia among the ranks of the largest strategic tech investors globally, though it still trails more established names: Alphabet and Amazon both reported equity investments above $100 billion in recent earnings, according to the report.
Capital as a strategic weapon
Capital has increasingly become a key instrument for Nvidia, the company that dominates the market for the most advanced chips used in AI, known as GPUs.
In August, Nvidia announced partnerships with major investment firms aimed at mobilizing more than $500 billion in financing for its graphics processing units. The company also said it would provide up to $105 billion in conditional credit support for an OpenAI data center in Ohio. And on Thursday, Nvidia revealed plans to acquire AI startup Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.
Nvidia’s investments have flowed to frontier labs, neoclouds, and companies building software and novel technologies for AI in both private and public markets, according to CNBC. The value of its holdings has also been boosted by climbing tech stocks.
In its earnings statement, Nvidia said the investments aim to enhance growth opportunities, cultivate its ecosystem, and strengthen its competitive position.
Ecosystem and expansion
“Nvidia has a clear interest in ensuring that its customers and partners prosper to provide future business for Nvidia,” Ian Fogg, research director at CCS Insight, told CNBC. “Equity investments help companies to innovate, but also give Nvidia a degree of control to encourage companies to take an Nvidia-related innovation path.”
Fogg noted that the company is keen to diversify its AI business. In its most recent quarter, about $48.7 billion of its $96.2 billion in revenue came from the Hyperscale segment, which includes the largest cloud players. Nvidia’s revenue jumped 106% year-over-year in its fiscal second quarter, and its stock has risen 33% over the past 12 months.
Frontier AI labs have been major recipients of Nvidia’s cash. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress told analysts on an earnings call that Nvidia has invested “nearly $50 billion in the frontier AI labs.” In February, the company announced a $30 billion investment in OpenAI as part of that company’s $110 billion funding round.
Kress explained that while frontier AI labs have “extraordinary” demand for compute, they are growing faster than their balance sheets and credit profiles can support, making it difficult for them to secure AI factory infrastructure independently. “Nvidia is needed to help power this flywheel,” she said.
Neoclouds and new technologies
Neoclouds — companies that buy Nvidia GPUs and rent access to them — have also courted Nvidia. In January, Nvidia invested $2 billion into CoreWeave, and in March it was announced that Nebius secured a $2 billion investment.
“By injecting capital directly into AI infrastructure financiers, specialized cloud providers and foundation model labs, Nvidia provides these startups with the balance sheet strength to purchase tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs,” Naveen Chhabra, principal analyst at Forrester, told CNBC.
Nvidia has also targeted emerging technology areas. Since March, the company has committed at least $6.5 billion to companies developing photonics and optical technology, which transmits data using light and is considered more efficient than using electricity. Lumentum, Coherent, and Marvell each received $2 billion from Nvidia.
“Optics/networking specialists, like Coherent, receive investments to ensure their tooling, NVLink protocols and design engines remain strictly optimized for Nvidia’s architecture,” Chhabra said. “This creates high switching costs and protects the CUDA software moat against competing accelerators from AMD or internal custom chips from cloud providers.”
Nvidia’s existing bets have paid off handsomely. Its $5 billion investment in Intel has grown to $30 billion, while its SpaceX holding was worth $21 billion as of June, according to the report.
Chhabra added that as global AI chip demand runs into physical supply constraints, particularly around high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, Nvidia is using strategic equity positions in areas like domestic manufacturing — Intel, for example — to secure priority access, reduce reliance on Asian foundries, and stabilize key component supplies.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/nvidia-ai-investments-99-billion.html
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