Sunday, January 12, 2025

Behold, Nvidia’s empire of AI investments

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Image Credits: Akio Kon/Bloomberg / Getty Images

Nvidia has been powering the current wave of AI with not only its chips, but also with money. Over the past two years, Nvidia has invested in 84 startups, according to PitchBook data. That puts it ahead of Alphabet (with 83 deals) and Microsoft (with 73).

Marina Temkin has an overview of those investments, starting with the $100 million Nvidia reportedly invested in OpenAI's $6.6 billion blockbuster round. And even limiting herself to rounds that were larger than $100 million, Marina has still drawn up a sizable list.

The goal, Nvidia says, is to expand the AI ecosystem by backing "game changers and market makers."

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Apple

How to turn off notification summaries from Apple Intelligence: As part of Apple Intelligence, the company's products will now summarize all your notifications on your lock screen. But if you find the summaries unreliable or unhelpful, Ivan Mehta explains how to turn them off. Read more

Everything you need to know about open source licenses: Paul Sawers has a comprehensive rundown of the many types of licenses, from the permissive to the "copyleft" to "faux-pen" source licenses that aren't truly open source. Read more

VCs say AI startups need proprietary data: TechCrunch recently surveyed 20 VCs who invest in enterprise startups, and Rebecca Szkutak looks at what they said about AI startups that can build competitive moats. One of the common refrains? The need for unique, proprietary data. Read more

What else we're reading

📗 Over the holiday break, n+1 published a thorough critique of how Netflix has transformed our viewing habits. You may not fully agree with the bleak picture painted by the piece (hey, I like some of those Netflix Christmas rom-coms!) but it makes for interesting, and occasionally hilarious, reading. Read more

📕 Also, The New York Times takes us behind the scenes of Mark Zuckerberg's rapid reshaping of Meta to match the values of the incoming Trump administration. Read more