Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just stated that his company’s investments in key AI partners OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be their last, as reported by TechCrunch. He made these remarks at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in downtown San Francisco on Wednesday.
Huang’s official reason for this decision is that once these companies go public, which is anticipated later this year, the opportunity for such investments simply closes. While that sounds straightforward, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this explanation rings a bit hollow when you consider how late-stage private investing usually works.
Firms often pile into companies right up to their public debut, looking for more upside. However, Nvidia is already making a ton of money selling the chips that power both OpenAI and Anthropic, so it’s not like they desperately need to boost returns by pouring even more cash into them.
Growing concerns that such deals might be creating an investment bubble could also explain why the commitment shrank
When asked for comment earlier today, a Nvidia spokesman pointed to a transcript from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. In that call, Huang had said that all of Nvidia’s investments are “focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach.”
There are a few other dynamics that could also explain this sudden pullback, especially the circular nature of these financial arrangements. Back in September, when Nvidia first announced it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, MIT Sloan professor Michael Cusumano called it “kind of a wash.” He pointed out that “Nvidia is investing $100 billion in OpenAI stock, and OpenAI is saying they are going to buy $100 billion or more of Nvidia chips.”
The investment Nvidia finalized just last week as part of OpenAI’s $110 billion round came in at $30 billion, which is well short of that earlier, much larger pledge. Huang has, however, already dismissed the theory that there’s any bad blood between the two companies, calling it “nonsense.”
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s relationship with Anthropic has looked pretty rocky on its own. Just two months after Nvidia announced a $10 billion investment in November, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took the stage at Davos. Without directly naming Nvidia, he compared U.S. chip companies selling high-performance AI processors to approved Chinese customers to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.” That’s a pretty intense statement!
In retrospect, that “nuclear weapons” comparison was just the tip of the iceberg. Just days ago, the Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic, which bars federal agencies and military contractors from using its technology. This happened after Anthropic refused to allow its models to be used for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.
Within hours of that announcement, OpenAI said it had struck its own deal with the Pentagon. Anthropic quickly called this move “mendacious,” and it seems the public largely agrees. Within 24 hours of these back-to-back announcements, Anthropic’s Claude shot to the top of the free-app rankings on Apple’s U.S. App Store, actually overtaking ChatGPT.
Published: Mar 5, 2026 02:00 pm