Nvidia’s $24B AI deal blitz has Wall Street asking questions about ‘murky’ circular invest

November 19, 2025

Nvidia’s (NVDA) latest AI partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) and Anthropic underscores the chipmaker’s torrid pace of dealmaking this year, even as circular artificial intelligence agreements have set off alarm bells among investors.

Nvidia invested $23.7 billion in firms in the space through 59 deals between the start of 2025 and Monday, according to Pitchbook data. For the entirety of 2024, Nvidia inked a total of 54 deals worth $22.8 billion.

Nvidia’s investments in AI firms — totaling roughly $53 billion and amounting to 170 deals between 2020 and 2025 — span the entire AI ecosystem, ranging from large language model developers such as OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Cohere (COHR.PVT) to “neoclouds” like Lambda (LAMD.PVT) and CoreWeave (CRWV), which specialize in AI services and compete with the chipmaker’s Big Tech customers.

Nvidia investments in AI between 2020 and 2025 (Pitchbook).

In the deal announced Tuesday, Nvidia and Microsoft will invest up to $10 billion and as much as $5 billion, respectively, in AI developer Anthropic (ANTH.PVT). Anthropic will buy $30 billion of compute capacity from Microsoft Azure, and Anthropic and Nvidia will collaborate on design and engineering, the companies said.

The partnership follows Nvidia’s $6.6 billion investment in OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) in October and a $6 billion investment in Elon Musk’s xAI (XAAI.PVT) in November, per Pitchbook. Nvidia has committed to investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI in an eye-popping deal this September that sent its stock higher.

The heaping pile of cash Nvidia has poured into AI startups is a sign of how the chipmaker has looked to strengthen its grip on the market following the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, which brought generative artificial intelligence mainstream. Nvidia is the dominant AI chipmaker whose GPUs (graphics processing units) are crucial to training and running AI models.

But analysts and investors are beginning to question the nature of some of Nvidia’s AI investments in its own customers. Tech stocks have sold off in recent days amid concerns of a market bubble driven by artificial intelligence hype.

“It’s very murky,” Seaport analyst Jay Goldberg, who holds a rare Sell rating on Nvidia stock, said of the chipmaker’s investment in OpenAI. The investment, announced in September, is part of a partnership in which OpenAI would purchase a ton of Nvidia chips — the AI developer has committed to deploying “at least 10 gigawatts” of compute capacity from Nvidia’s AI systems to train and run its next generation of artificial intelligence models.

“It’s very unclear what the motivation here is … To what degree is Nvidia investing versus buying demand or subsidizing demand [for its chips]?”

Nvidia declined to comment on its investments in its own customers.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked on the Bg2 podcast to respond to analyst critiques that its investment in OpenAI could artificially inflate AI demand, he said that Nvidia’s investment is separate from revenue it could see from the AI developer.

“[OpenAI] is likely going to be the next multitrillion-dollar hyperscale company, and who doesn’t want to be an investor in that?” Huang said. “My only regret is that they invited us to invest early on, and we were so poor that we didn’t invest when I should have given them all my money.”

“We’ve made some great investments,” he said, using Nvidia’s investments in xAI and CoreWeave as examples.

Many analysts agree with Huang that Nvidia’s big investments in AI, such as its deal with OpenAI, are smart plays in boosting the AI ecosystem.

“I could argue that there’s no better use of Nvidia’s cash right now,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told Yahoo Finance in October, speaking of its investments in its own customers.

Nvidia is set to report earnings after the bell Wednesday.