Nvidia's Record 121 Startup Deals Meet Interim CEO Colette Kress

121 startup funding deals. That is the count Nvidia and its NVentures venture arm have logged so far in 2026, according to Crunchbase data — already past the 91 known financings of last year and the 54 the year before that.

It is the chipmaker's most prolific year yet as a private-company investor, and it lands in an awkward week. Jensen Huang's sudden departure from the top job left CFO Colette Kress in the interim CEO seat, with earnings scheduled for Nov. 17.

The share price wobbled on the news. Even so, Nvidia's valuation remains close to $4 trillion, which puts the venture portfolio in perspective: the startup bets represent a small fraction of the market cap, and yet they map where the company thinks the next wave of AI infrastructure, robotics and model developers will appear.

What precipitated the leadership change?

Reuters reported Nov. 12 that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would step down, a blow for an AI boom that had made him one of the industry's most powerful executives. Further reporting described multiple extramarital affairs, including with employees, per Reuters, and with a woman U.S. intelligence experts suspect of spying for China, according to the New York Times. The board has said it expects operations, customer commitments and its product roadmap to continue without interruption.

How wide is the investment footprint?

Nvidia is the most active corporate investor so far in 2026, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows. Nvidia and NVentures together also rank among the top 20 most active investors in startups this year overall. The 121 deals span AI model developers, data center operators, robotics startups and healthcare companies — the same broad approach the company pursued in 2025, when it and its venture arm took part in 91 known startup financings, up from 54 in 2024.

The largest Nvidia-backed rounds of 2026:

• OpenAI, Series G — $122 billion, closed March. Entire round size, including other investors' contributions, not Nvidia's individual check.
• Anthropic, Series G — $30 billion, February. Same caveat on round size.
• Crusoe, Series F — $3.9 billion, September. The AI infrastructure provider.
• Mistral AI, Series D — roughly $3.5 billion, September. Model developer.

Those figures represent the whole rounds, other investors included, which is how Crunchbase records them. Nvidia's own checks sit inside a much smaller box.

What does NVentures buy that the model labs don't?

The venture arm's larger bets reach well past foundation-model developers:

• Skild AI, Series C — $1.4 billion, January. Robot intelligence developer.
• Waabi, Series C — $750 million, January. Autonomous driving.
• Bedrock Robotics, Series B — $270 million, February; Series C — $600 million, October. Technology to automate construction equipment; two rounds in one year.
• Aidoc, Series E — $150 million, April. Medical imaging AI.

As in years past, Nvidia usually invests alongside other investors. The company or its venture arm holds the lead or co-lead slot in about one in five of its 2026 deals, per Crunchbase data.

Capital is only part of the pitch. NVentures describes its offering as "access to technical teams, technology integrations and help reaching customers." For a startup building on Blackwell-class infrastructure, that integration pathway can matter more than the check size.

What changes under Kress?

Reuters reported this week, citing two people familiar with the matter, that Nvidia's CFO and now interim CEO Colette Kress had pushed back on Huang's increasingly large AI investments. Her promotion puts the largest dealmaker in the company's history in the seat that has to answer for the bill.

The board's assurance that operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap continue without interruption does not settle the pace of future investment. That question stays open.

What to watch on Nov. 17

Founders and investors will read the earnings call for signs of how much of Huang's investment playbook survives under new leadership. Whether the 121-deal pace holds, and whether Nvidia keeps leading roughly one in five of its own rounds, will tell the AI infrastructure market whether the record run was a founder-driven sprint or a standing corporate strategy — a question that reaches beyond chips to the labs, data center operators and robotics startups that increasingly depend on Nvidia's roadmap to shape their own roadmaps.