Nvidia stunned the artificial intelligence industry at the beginning of 2026 with an aggressive investment strategy. According to a recent report by CNBC, this chip giant at the core of AI computing has committed over $40 billion in equity investments in the first few months of this year. The scale of its capital deployment is profoundly reshaping the competitive landscape of the global AI ecosystem.

Among this substantial investment, the most notable move is the $30 billion strategic investment in OpenAI, which further deepens the interest alignment between top computing power suppliers and leading large model developers. In addition to heavy investments in top unicorns, Nvidia's investment reach is extending across all links of the industrial chain, including up to $3.2 billion investment in glass manufacturing giant Corning, and up to $2.1 billion in funding for data center operator IREN. According to FactSet data, Nvidia has participated in about 24 rounds of financing for private startups since the beginning of 2026, and in 2025, the total number of venture capital transactions reached 67.

Although this "investing in customers" behavior has triggered ongoing market doubts about circular transactions and funds flowing within affiliated companies, industry analysis generally believes that Nvidia is building an extremely solid "competitive moat" through these capital means.

As its Blackwell and Rubin architecture chips are expected to generate at least $1 trillion in revenue by the end of 2027, Nvidia is leveraging its excess profits to accelerate the construction of a full-stack ecosystem from the hardware layer, infrastructure to the application layer. This deep equity participation not only ensures the stable distribution of its latest AI chips but also builds exclusive advantages in technical standards and supply priority, indicating that the AI industry is entering a strongly vertically integrated era driven by computing power dominance.