Update: this story follows Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO, reported by Geekiki in our earlier report on Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO. The new development is the impact of that exit on AI startup funding, according to a TechCrunch report published on November 13.
Jensen Huang stepped down on November 12, after 33 years as Nvidia's co-founder and CEO. Colette Kress, the company's executive vice president and CFO, took over as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor.
According to TechCrunch, citing PitchBook data, Nvidia took part in 105 startup investment rounds in 2026 alone, often as the largest investor, and had been pouring tens of billions of dollars a year into the sector. Investors and founders interviewed for the report say Huang's departure blows a hole in that funding.
"If that direction changes, it'll be a big blow to so many young companies," Maria Davidson, founder of Relational Capital, told TechCrunch. "Nvidia is carrying almost every AI-native startup from application to neocloud," said Shamillah Bankiya of Dawn Capital.
Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, told TechCrunch that most of the significant investment decisions came from Huang himself. Interim CEO Colette Kress is seen by investors as far more conservative: "I don't think she's going to commit the same amount of money to keep the early-stage ecosystem going," one investor told the outlet.
Where Nvidia put its money
Nvidia's biggest bets under Huang were neoclouds, inference providers and open-weight models — expensive businesses to build. The company backed CoreWeave while it was still private, took part in two of Crusoe's rounds, including its $1.4 billion Series E, and last year wrote an $800 million check into a $2 billion Series B for Reflection AI, before the startup had earned meaningful revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nvidia also agreed to buy Hugging Face for $13 billion, a deal expected to close in 2027, and holds investments in Mistral AI, Lambda and Black Forest Labs.
According to one investor who spoke to TechCrunch, infrastructure companies that needed $100 million to $500 million in GPUs would often raise half of that amount, at valuations of $1 billion or more, from Nvidia — and the chipmaker's presence on the cap table gave other investors comfort to join. Without that backing, traditional VCs are likely to think twice before writing checks, and some deals may even be paused.
What is fact and what is expectation
It is important to separate the two: Huang's exit, the 105 rounds in 2026 and the deal values cited are reported facts based on PitchBook data and public records. The pullback in AI startup funding, by contrast, is an expectation voiced by investors and founders interviewed by TechCrunch — Nvidia has announced no change to its investment policy.
There is also an expectation that rivals such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and AMD will try to fill part of the gap. Dharmesh Thakker, a general partner at Battery Ventures, doubts, however, that they will pour hundreds of millions into pre-revenue infrastructure startups the way Nvidia did.
Even so, few believe a slowdown in Nvidia's investing alone will halt the broader AI boom. "Founders and leaders must be held accountable," said Amulya Vishwanath, a former Nvidia employee who now runs her own venture capital fund. "That talent will, and must, continue to thrive."
Image credit: Jensen Huang speaks during a fireside chat at Stanford University on April 30, 2026. Photo by Anders Eidesvik, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 license.
Sources: TechCrunch: Jensen Huang's departure blasts big hole in AI startup funding, VCs and founders say (November 13, 2026, by Marina Temkin; investment data from PitchBook).
This article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and sources on the internet. The slowdown in AI startup funding is an expectation voiced by investors and founders, not a confirmed change. Consult the original sources to confirm the data.
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