Markets
Semiconductor Companies Have Now Participated in Over $250B of Startup Financing This Year — Nvidia Alone in 59 Rounds, and Almost None of It Went to Application Software
Crunchbase reported today that chip giants have collectively participated in over $250 billion of startup funding year to date, across 16 mega-rounds of $1B+ and 60+ financings of $100M+. Nvidia leads with 59 known round participations (up from 53 in all of 2025), leading or co-leading at least 11, including the $122B OpenAI round that alone accounts for ~95% of semiconductor-led financing value and a $5B July round into Safe Superintelligence; AMD did 19 financings and Samsung at least 17. The read for SaaS builders is directional: the largest strategic pools of capital in tech are funding model labs, robotics and compute, and the application layer is not where the money is being placed.
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