Chip giants poured $250B into startups this year

Semiconductor companies have put more than $250 billion into startup funding this year, per Crunchbase News.

Almost none of that reached application software companies, per the report. Chip investors often tie GPU access to their checks, so the money also decides who gets compute.

Those totals span 16 rounds of $1 billion or more and more than 60 rounds above $100 million, per Crunchbase.

Nvidia did most of the work. It joined 59 known rounds this year, up from 53 across all of 2025, and led or co-led at least 11 of them. The $122 billion OpenAI round alone makes up about 95% of the total value chipmakers put into startups this year.

AMD joined 19 financings and Samsung at least 17, per Crunchbase. In July, Nvidia also put $5 billion into Safe Superintelligence, separate from the OpenAI round.