Jensen Huang explains why Nvidia bets broad instead of picking winners

Nvidia prefers to invest in numerous technology companies, rather than just a few select ones, and there's a reason for this choice.

"There is an abundance of excellent, remarkable foundation model companies, and we aim to invest in them all," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned on the "Dwarkesh" podcast episode released Wednesday. "We don't focus on selecting winners. It's our role to support everyone."

Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, stated two main reasons for this strategy. Firstly, he explained, it isn't Nvidia's responsibility to choose winners. Secondly, the company's history offers a valuable lesson.

"At Nvidia's beginning, there were 60 companies focused on 3D graphics," Huang recalled. "Looking at those 60, trying to pick one that would succeed, Nvidia might not have topped that list."

He shared that back then, Nvidia's graphics technology didn't seem promising.

"Everyone would've counted us out," he said. "Yet, look where we are today. So, I recognise the importance of humility. Avoid picking winners."

Nvidia, now the most valuable company globally, has invested heavily in enterprises across the AI sector and connected fields, such as biotechnology, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.

The chip maker holds major shares in public companies, including CoreWeave, Intel, Synopsys, and Nokia.

Nvidia has also expanded its reach in the large language model domain.

In November, Nvidia pledged up to $10 billion in Anthropic for Claude's development. By February, the company announced a $30 billion investment in OpenAI.

During a conference in March, Huang revealed these would likely be Nvidia's final investments in those two private firms.

Nvidia also invests in France's frontier lab Mistral AI.

The tech leader has extended its backing to startups like autonomous vehicle developer Wayve, data labelling enterprise Scale AI, and Figure AI, working on humanoid robotics.