Jensen Huang's Departure Creates AI Startup Funding Gap as CoreWeave Expected to Face Tighter Investment
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Jensen Huang's departure from Nvidia leaves a critical funding gap in the AI startup ecosystem — the company joined 105 rounds this year alone, and interim CEO Colette Kress is widely expected to be far more conservative.
How central was Nvidia to AI startup funding?
PitchBook data shows Nvidia participated in 105 funding rounds this year, typically as the largest investor.
Dawn Capital partner Shamilla Bankiya put it plainly: Nvidia "propped up nearly every AI-native startup from the application layer to new cloud companies."
This means → Nvidia was not just a chipmaker selling GPUs. It doubled as a "super angel" for the entire AI ecosystem — writing checks and shipping chips at the same time, giving other investors the confidence to follow.
How much did Huang personally control?
Seligman Ventures managing partner Umesh Padval said Nvidia's major startup investment decisions typically came directly from Huang himself.
Under his lead, an infrastructure company needing $100 million to $500 million in GPU compute could raise half that sum from Nvidia at a $1 billion-plus valuation.
In plain terms = Huang did not just supply capital. He set a "valuation anchor" — once Nvidia was in, others dared to follow. That anchor is now loose.
Where exactly did the money go?
Nvidia's portfolio spans CoreWeave (early private rounds), Crusoe (including a $1.4 billion Series E), Mistral AI, Lambda, and Black Forest Labs.
This year it agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $13 billion (closing expected 2027). Last year it put $800 million into Reflection AI's $2 billion Series B — a company with no meaningful revenue at the time.
This reflects Huang-era investment logic: bet on the track, bet on open source, bet on infrastructure — revenue was not a prerequisite; ecosystem positioning was.
What changes under Kress?
The market consensus is that interim CEO Kress is far more conservative on investment than Huang.
One investor told TechCrunch: "She's much more cautious. I don't think she'll deploy the same scale of capital to keep the early ecosystem running."
This means → Nvidia is expected to maintain smaller follow-on stakes in existing portfolio companies but become far pickier on new deals — early-stage, pre-revenue infrastructure startups face the sharpest cut.
Who can pick up the baton?
Some investors look to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and AMD to fill the gap.
But Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker cautioned: these companies are unlikely to pour hundreds of millions into pre-revenue infrastructure startups the way Nvidia did.
Bankiya singled out Huang's support for the European AI ecosystem — "He believed in open source and genuinely believed in Europe." If that support stops, "it will be a massive funding and ecosystem gap that no one can fill."
Will the AI boom end because of this?
Most investors believe Nvidia's slower investment pace is not enough to kill the broader AI boom.
But downward pressure on valuations is already forming: without Nvidia's "valuation anchor," later-round pricing benchmarks will drift lower.
In plain terms = AI is not going away, but capital is getting more expensive — the real test is who can give early startups both money and conviction after Huang.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。