Jensen Huang’s departure blasts big hole in AI startup funding, VCs and founders say

It was the resignation heard across the world. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s embattled CEO who co-founded and led the company for 33 years, had officially stepped down. “It’s like a bomb went off,” one neocloud founder told TechCrunch when he first heard the news. 

Over the last several years, Nvidia has been a prolific investor, pouring tens of billions into startups annually, and participating in 105 rounds this year alone often as the largest investor, according to PitchBook. “If that direction changes, it’ll be a big blow to so many young companies,” said Maria Davidson, founder of Relational Capital. 

Huang’s absence leaves the startup ecosystem without one of its biggest champions and with far less capital for now, investors say, which could have a massive impact on dealmaking, valuations, funding, and even competition.

“Nvidia is carrying almost every AI-native startup from application to neocloud,” Dawn Capital’s Shamilla Bankiya told TechCrunch. 

Most of the significant decisions to invest in startups often came from Jensen himself, according to Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures. Padval has known Huang since serving on the board of Mellanox Technologies, a networking chipmaker Nvidia acquired for approximately $7 billion in 2020. While there is hope that Huang’s eventual successor will resume his dealmaking spree, investors aren’t hopeful that it will happen in the short term. 

Nvidia’s interim CEO, Colette Kress is expected to institute some changes, especially when it comes to Nvidia’s investments into AI startups at the crux of the billion-dollar data centre build-out. Huang’s rampant dealmaking in this sphere has been a source of concern for Wall Street.

“She’s much more conservative,” one investor said of Kress. “I don’t think she’s going to commit the same amount of money to keep the early-stage ecosystem going.” 

Even so, few believe that Nvivia’s investment slowdown will by itself halt the broader AI boom.