Nvidia isn’t just selling chips anymore. It’s investing — aggressively. Since the start of 2026, the chipmaker has poured more than 40 billion dollars into AI companies. This isn’t a side hustle. It’s a second identity.
The numbers are staggering
30 billion went to OpenAI alone. Add stakes in Anthropic and xAI (which merged with SpaceX earlier this year), plus at least seven billion-dollar deals with publicly traded companies. Just this week: up to 3.2 billion for glassmaker Corning and 2.1 billion for data center operator IREN.
The most spectacular single result? Nvidia’s 5 billion dollar bet on Intel has grown to over 25 billion in a matter of months. A historic return by any measure.
The strategy behind it
What Nvidia is doing here isn’t traditional venture capital. It’s financing the entire AI supply chain — from chip to cloud to end product. The logic is simple: if the companies Nvidia invests in grow, they buy more Nvidia chips. A self-reinforcing cycle.
Last fiscal year, Nvidia generated 97 billion dollars in free cash flow. Enough to be chip supplier, investor, and infrastructure partner all at once.
The criticism is growing
This is exactly where critics are pushing back. In some AI circles, comparisons to the dot-com era are getting louder: Nvidia invests in companies that buy Nvidia chips — and in some cases even leases compute capacity back to them. It’s reminiscent of the vendor financing that inflated the late-90s bubble.
Whether the comparison is fair is debatable. AI demand is real, the products work, and the funded companies are actually growing revenue. But the entanglement between chip seller and chip buyer is getting tighter — and that’s worth watching.
What this means for the industry
Nvidia is no longer just a hardware manufacturer. It’s positioning itself as the gravitational center of the AI ecosystem. If you need Nvidia chips, you can also get Nvidia money — and vice versa. That creates dependencies, but also stability in an industry that historically burns through capital fast.
Is this sustainable? Ask me again in two years. But right now, Nvidia has pulled off one of the most impressive dual roles in tech history.
Sources: CNBC, TechCrunch