Nvidia has invested over $40 billion in AI companies in 2026 - more than the entire venture capital industry deployed in 2024
What it really says
Chip manufacturer Nvidia has invested more than 40 billion US dollars in equity stakes in AI companies in the first months of 2026 alone - a sum exceeding the entire global venture capital volume for AI startups in 2024. The largest single investment was a 30-billion-dollar check for OpenAI, which had announced a partnership in September 2025 to deploy 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. Other significant investments include up to 3.2 billion dollars in glass manufacturer Corning, up to 2.1 billion dollars in data center operator IREN, 2 billion dollars in CoreWeave, and 2 billion dollars in the Nebius Group. Nvidia also participated in major funding rounds for Anthropic and xAI. In total, Nvidia has made at least seven billion-dollar investments in publicly traded companies in 2026 and participated in roughly two dozen funding rounds for private companies. CEO Jensen Huang stated that the investments serve to strategically expand and deepen the ecosystem. In 2025, Nvidia had already completed 67 venture deals. The investment strategy is part of Nvidia's effort to position itself as the architect of the entire AI infrastructure - not just as a chip supplier but as a central hub of the AI ecosystem.
Our assessment
The figure is staggering: 40 billion dollars in equity investments in just a few months - from a single company. To put this in perspective, this is roughly equivalent to the annual budget of Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The legitimate concern behind this news is not about Nvidia as an individual company but about the structure of the AI market as a whole. Critics, including Wedbush analyst Matthew Bryson, describe this as circular investments: Nvidia invests in companies that use the money to buy Nvidia chips, which boosts Nvidia's revenue, which in turn enables new investments. This pattern is reminiscent of vendor financing during the dot-com era, when Cisco and other networking companies financed customers who then bought their products - until the bubble burst. At the same time, the situation is not identical: unlike then, AI products are not merely promises but generate real revenues in the billions. The deeper question is one of power concentration: when a single chip manufacturer simultaneously serves as supplier, investor, and de facto gatekeeper of the entire AI ecosystem, a dependency emerges that goes far beyond normal market dynamics. For society, the question is: do we want the development of a key technology to depend so heavily on the strategic interests of a single company?
Relevance for Germany
This development is relevant for Germany for several reasons. First, it highlights Europe's massive dependency on US AI infrastructure: there is no European company that holds even a remotely comparable position in the AI ecosystem. German companies deploying AI are indirectly dependent on Nvidia's chip monopoly - approximately 90 percent of AI training hardware worldwide comes from Nvidia. Second, this concentration raises questions for European industrial policy: the EU Commission has repeatedly called for 'technological sovereignty,' yet the reality is that Europe is practically entirely dependent on the US and Taiwan for AI hardware. Third, the debate over circular investments also concerns German investors and pension funds that have invested heavily in Nvidia and the AI ecosystem. Should the dot-com parallel prove accurate, it would also be felt in the German capital market. The German government has pledged additional funds for European chip production as part of its AI strategy, but the volume - a few billion euros over several years - appears modest in light of Nvidia's 40-billion-dollar quarter.
Fact check
The core information - Nvidia invested over 40 billion US dollars in AI equity stakes in 2026 - is consistently reported by CNBC and TechCrunch, both referencing Nvidia's SEC filings and public announcements. Individual investments are documented through separate press releases and SEC filings: 30 billion dollars for OpenAI (announced September 2025), 3.2 billion dollars for Corning, 2.1 billion dollars for IREN, 2 billion dollars for CoreWeave, 2 billion dollars for Nebius. Criticism of circular investments comes primarily from Wedbush analyst Matthew Bryson and is supported by a detailed Bloomberg analysis tracing money flows between Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and other AI companies. The comparison with global VC volume for AI in 2024 comes from TechCrunch calculations based on PitchBook data. Limitation: some of the stated amounts represent maximum figures from framework agreements; actual disbursed amounts may be lower.
Source
- • CNBC 09.05.2026 (cnbc.com/2026/05/09/nvidia-embraces-ai-investor-topping-40-billion-in-equity-bets-2026.html)
- • TechCrunch 09.05.2026 (techcrunch.com/2026/05/09/nvidia-has-already-committed-40b-to-equity-ai-deals-this-year/)
- • it-boltwise 09.05.2026 (it-boltwise.de/nvidia-treibt-ki-investitionen-mit-ueber-40-milliarden-dollar-voran.html)
- • aktien.news 09.05.2026 (aktien.news/nvidia-uberschreitet-40-milliarden-dollar-bei-ki-aktienbeteiligungen-in-2026)
- • Bloomberg 2026 (bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-ai-circular-deals/)