By Kristina Partsinevelos,Ashley Capoot
Publication Date: 2026-05-09 12:00:00
Nvidia founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, speaks during the 29th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on May 4, 2026.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Nvidia stepped on the gas last year, putting cash into companies up and down the AI infrastructure stack and helping to fund businesses that could turn around and buy the chipmaker’s technology. It’s been a lucrative endeavor, as the company’s $5 billion bet on Intel is now worth over $25 billion, a historic return in a matter of months.
In 2026, the pace of deals has kicked into overdrive, with Nvidia already topping $40 billion in commitments and expanding its portfolio to include more public equities.
This week alone Nvidia forged an agreement with data center operator IREN, giving it the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in the company, a day after Nvidia struck a pact with Corning, allowing it to invest up to $3.2 billion in the 175-year-old glass maker. Shares of IREN and Corning popped on the announcements.
Nvidia has been the biggest winner of the artificial intelligence boom, producing the graphics processing units required to train AI models and run large workloads. The global scramble to secure GPUs has lifted Nvidia’s stock by more than 11-fold in four years, propelling the company to a roughly $5.2 trillion market cap and making it the most valuable business in the world.
To help the company grow its dominance beyond chips, Nvidia is financing the entire…