Over the past couple of years, Nvidia, by far the largest AI chipmaker, has ramped up its investments in startups that propel it deeper into the AI space. According to S&P Global and Crunchbase, the funding and investment database, Nvidia’s startup investments jumped 280% year-over-year from 2022 to 2023, with the company and its VC arm, Nvidia Ventures, participating in ~46 deals last year.
It’s not the only one. Nvidia’s chief rivals in the AI chip space — AMD, Arm and Intel — have been investing aggressively in startups, too, looking to make up ground in markets inclusive of the especially frothy generative AI segment.
We at TechCrunch were curious to see how the investments stacked up between the top AI chipmakers — Nvidia, AMD, Arm and Intel. So we pored over Crunchbase data, with an eye toward recent activity from each chipmaker and their VC divisions.
Intel
Of Nvidia’s competitors, Intel far and away has the biggest startup investment operation thanks to Intel Capital, its long-running VC. In 2023, Intel Capital deployed over $350 million across its investments, including OpenAI rival AI21 Labs, identity risk management platform Grip Security, app delivery network Fly.io and workplace safety outfit TuMeke.
Crunchbase data isn’t exhaustive. But it shows that Intel Capital participated in 32 startup deals in 2023, down from 47 in 2022. Intel also directly invested in two startups last year (Hugging Face and Twelve Labs), per Crunchbase, plus made a “non-equity” investment in payment infrastructure startup Tweed (via Intel’s Ignite accelerator) — bringing its grand total deal count to 34 in 2023 and 47 in 2022.
Crunchbase lists Intel as having invested in Vanguard SemiConductor and Aleph Alpha, but a spokesperson tells TechCrunch that’s incorrect, so we’ve excluded them from the count.
Curiously, AI startups — despite their strategic importance to the chip industry these days — make up a relatively small portion of Intel’s venture portfolio. According to Crunchbase, Intel’s holdings in software, IT and enterprise SaaS companies far outnumber its AI startup holdings by deal volume.
That could change as Intel seeks to deliver new software products and services, including GenAI-powered products, that make its hardware more attractive for a range of AI applications. Just in January, Intel spun out a company, Articul8 AI, to build GenAI solutions running on Intel chips for enterprises in the aerospace, financial services, telecommunications and semiconductor industries.
Arm
Arm might not be a particularly active startup investor compared to Intel. But the company, which makes most of its money licensing chipsets it designs to customers, has several direct investment deals as well as deals through Deeptech Labs, a VC fund and accelerator that Arm co-launched with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Martlet Capital.
Last year, Arm made four direct investments in startups — microprocessor venture SiPearl, eSIM security company Kigen and Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi Foundation — and six investments through Deeptech Labs. Beneficiaries of the Deeptech Labs cash included Nu Quantum, a quantum networking startup; RoboK, which is building 3D sensing tech; and Perceptual Robotics, a provider of automated wind turbine inspection tech.
Altogether, then, Arm poured money into 10 startups in 2023. That’s a significant uptick from 2022, when Arm invested in just four companies — a direct investment in the open source hardware startup Arduino and three investments through Deeptech Labs (Waku Robotics, Xapien and SonicEdge).
One presumes Arm’s future investments will rope in AI in a more obvious way, given that the company’s betting on sales of both its data center and consumer AI chips to steeply increase this year.
AMD
AMD has a VC org of its own, AMD Ventures, through which it invests in startups. But for AMD, the deals come relatively few and far between.
Last year, AMD Ventures made a handful of investments, participating in the Series A for Ethernovia, a startup building a family of ethernet chips and software, and investing in rounds for Essential AI, which looks to pioneer AI-powered software automation tech; Moreh, a company creating tools to optimize AI models; and Hugging Face (alongside Intel and Nvidia). The year before, AMD inked a single deal with Radian Arc, an infrastructure-as-a-service platform for cloud gaming and AI — and made no other investments.
AMD’s deal total in 2023 came to four — on the conservative side compared to rivals. But 2024 may look a bit different. Contacted for comment, AMD had this to share from Matthew Hein, the company’s chief strategy officer of corporate development:
AMD Ventures has ramped up its investment activity in the past year and is looking to accelerate further in 2024, targeting reaching a double-digit investment level. We invest across stages, supporting promising early startups poised to become market leaders, as well as mature later stage companies. Most of our new investments in 2024 will be targeting the AI ecosystem, including AI platforms, generative model companies and AI infrastructure offerings.
2024 will be a pivotal year for AMD in other respects. The company’s ramping up production of its MI300 AI chip, which is designed to handle AI workloads in data centers, and launching Ryzen 8040, its mobile AI-accelerated processors bound for laptops.
By the numbers
So it’s true: Nvidia isn’t the only chipmaker investing in early ventures. But it does appear to be outgunning the competition. In the first three quarters of 2023 alone, Nvidia funneled nearly a billion dollars to “non-affiliated” firms, per the earlier S&P Global report — a figure even Intel Capital struggled to match.
Success in the AI chipmaking space needn’t entail fostering a robust startup ecosystem. But it’s clear that Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies with control of about 95% of the market for AI chips, is playing for keeps — attempting to shore up dominance by spreading its financial influence far and wide.
I’d say its rivals have their work cut out for them.
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”
Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.
Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.
Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.
In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.
The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.
And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 100 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in base metal and utility stocks, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 103.40 points at 24,542.48.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 192.31 points at 42,932.73. The S&P 500 index was up 7.14 points at 5,822.40, while the Nasdaq composite was down 9.03 points at 18,306.56.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Tuesday.
The November crude oil contract was down 71 cents at US$69.87 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$2.42 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$7.20 at US$2,686.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.35 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 200 points in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were also headed higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 205.86 points at 24,508.12.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 336.62 points at 42,790.74. The S&P 500 index was up 34.19 points at 5,814.24, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.27 points at 18.342.32.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.71 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was down 15 cents at US$75.70 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.65 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$29.60 at US$2,668.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.47 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.
