Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s era of writing giant private checks to AI labs is coming to an end. Speaking on Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco, the Nvidia CEO said the company’s $30 billion investment in OpenAI “might be the last time it has the opportunity to ‘invest in a consequential company like this.’” The $100 billion deal the two companies discussed in September 2025, he added, “does not seem feasible.”

Anthropic got the same treatment. Nvidia’s $10 billion investment in the Claude maker is probably its last too, Huang said, for the same reason: both AI labs are expected to go public this year. OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The message was unmistakable: Nvidia’s stint as the AI industry’s private banker is winding down.

The $100 billion Nvidia-OpenAI deal that shrank

Nvidia and OpenAI announced a headline $100 billion tie-up in September 2025, a partnership that would have deepened a relationship already defined by OpenAI’s enormous appetite for Nvidia’s data center hardware. By February 2026, though, the Financial Times reported that the two companies had abandoned the arrangement amid doubts about the health of the AI sector, according to Reuters’ reporting on the story.

What replaced it is smaller but still enormous. Last week, OpenAI closed a $110 billion funding round led by Amazon, with SoftBank and Nvidia each contributing $30 billion, according to Business Quarter’s account of the disclosures. That’s the round Huang was referring to when he called Nvidia’s stake possibly its last.

“The reason is that they are going to go public,” Huang said, explaining why the $100 billion figure was no longer in the cards. He struck an unconcerned tone about Nvidia’s own prospects: “I’m fairly sure that if we provide the capacity they need, which the compute capacity they need, which we’re ramping up hard to go to, the revenues will more than follow.”

An IPO calendar is doing the work

Huang’s logic is straightforward. Late-stage private investments tend to taper off as companies approach an IPO, when public-market liquidity and valuation mechanisms take over. Both labs are in that phase.

Reuters previously reported that OpenAI is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion, with a filing possible in the second half of 2026 — though plans could change. Anthropic is also widely expected to list this year, even as it has said it has not finalized an IPO decision. Huang indicated the window for such private investments typically closes once companies go public.

Nvidia also declined to expand on Huang’s remarks beyond its prior statements. A company spokesperson referred reporters to comments from the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call, where Huang described Nvidia’s venture investments as focused on “expanding and deepening” its broader ecosystem — the goal, he said there, was strategic alignment rather than purely financial returns. From that angle, the stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic have already done their job: both companies are major, entrenched customers for Nvidia’s GPUs.

The circular-money question won’t go away

Not everyone reads the investments as innocent ecosystem-building. Some analysts have raised concerns about a circular flow of capital: the large investment in Anthropic would have made Nvidia a major investor in one of its biggest customers, and the money Nvidia poured into the startup was likely to be spent on its own AI processors, Reuters noted. The same critique applied to the OpenAI arrangement — each dollar Nvidia invested could come right back as a GPU order, propping up both sides’ numbers.

That scrutiny intensified after the September 2025 $100 billion proposal, which some analysts saw as reinforcing an already self-referential funding cycle across the AI sector. Huang’s retreat from further private commitments eases that criticism without Nvidia having to concede the point.

Why this matters

Huang is essentially telling investors that Nvidia doesn’t need equity in the model labs anymore — it needs them buying chips, and they’re going to keep buying chips. “The opportunity to invest $100 billion in OpenAI is probably not in the cards,” as he put it, but the compute demand that drove the original deal hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, the framing flips the relationship: Nvidia isn’t subsidizing its customers; its customers are about to become public companies whose GPU spending shows up in Nvidia’s data center revenue quarter after quarter.

There’s a secondary signal too. When the most important AI chip supplier in the world decides late-stage private rounds are done, it’s a read on where the industry’s capital cycle is headed. The private-checkbook phase of the AI boom — where billions moved between a handful of interlinked companies — is giving way to public markets, where those same valuations get tested in daylight. OpenAI at up to $1 trillion is the test everyone will be watching.

FAQ

Why is Nvidia stopping its investments in OpenAI and Anthropic? CEO Jensen Huang said the window for large private investments typically closes once companies go public, and both AI labs are expected to list this year. Nvidia views the stakes as strategic — made to expand its AI ecosystem — and that goal has already been achieved, he said.

What happened to the $100 billion Nvidia-OpenAI deal? Nvidia and OpenAI discussed a $100 billion tie-up in September 2025, but the Financial Times reported in February 2026 that the arrangement had been abandoned amid doubts about the AI sector’s health. Huang said at the Morgan Stanley conference that the $100 billion opportunity “does not seem feasible.”

How much has Nvidia invested in OpenAI and Anthropic? Nvidia finalized a $30 billion investment in OpenAI’s $110 billion funding round, which closed last week and was led by Amazon with SoftBank contributing another $30 billion. It previously invested $10 billion in Anthropic. Huang said both are probably Nvidia’s last rounds in the two companies.

When will OpenAI and Anthropic go public? Reuters previously reported that OpenAI is laying the groundwork for an IPO that could value the company at up to $1 trillion, with a filing possible in the second half of 2026. Anthropic is also widely expected to list this year, though it has said it has not finalized an IPO decision.

Sources: Reuters (via The Economic Times), Business Quarter, Tekedia, MENA Tech, StockTwits