00:00 Here's your Forbes daily briefing for Tuesday, February 20th.
00:04 Today on Forbes, how NVIDIA's investment arm is supercharging a new class of AI startups.
00:13 When Terray Therapeutics, an AI biotech firm, first trained its artificial intelligence
00:18 model CODI early last year, CEO Jacob Berlin thought the technology was "pretty good."
00:26 It was functional, but could be better.
00:29 That was before NVIDIA, the trillion-dollar chipmaker, invested in the startup, which
00:34 specializes in small-molecule drug discovery.
00:38 After the investment, announced in November, Terray retrained the model entirely, armed
00:43 with boosted computing resources and NVIDIA's engineering prowess.
00:47 Berlin told Forbes, "We just saw a much, much better performance, and we couldn't have gotten
00:53 there without the collaboration with NVIDIA and their support."
00:58 The revamping of the AI model illustrates the intangibles that come with having the
01:02 world's most valuable chipmaker on your cap table.
01:06 That's the case for more than two dozen companies that NVIDIA has invested in over the last
01:09 two years, through both its venture capital arm, InVentures, and broader corporate development
01:15 team.
01:16 In Terray's case, the X-factor was access to NVIDIA's researchers and engineers, who
01:21 know how to coax the most power out of the chip giant's coveted GPUs, or graphics processing
01:27 units, used for large-scale AI development.
01:31 In other cases, it means getting a quick email response from CEO Jensen Huang, an increasingly
01:36 more powerful figure in the tech industry, who leads the committee that signs off on
01:40 NVIDIA's investments.
01:42 And for many of the startups, it means getting the seal of approval of one of the most important
01:46 companies of the ongoing AI frenzy.
01:50 Sid Siddique, corporate vice president and head of InVentures, told Forbes, "We invest
01:56 broadly, in the broadest sense of the word.
01:59 Not just dollars, but expertise, technology, benefits, and all kinds of stuff."
02:05 He noted that one goal of the investments is "generating a healthy return for NVIDIA,
02:09 just like any financial investor."
02:13 Many of the biggest companies in tech have their own venture capital vehicles, including
02:17 Alphabet, Microsoft, and Salesforce.
02:20 But NVIDIA is relatively new to the game, and companies in its portfolio said it can
02:25 in some ways offer benefits beyond those of a traditional venture capital firm.
02:30 The unit was founded in early 2022, months before the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which
02:36 was largely trained on NVIDIA's GPUs, touched off a wave in Silicon Valley, bringing AI
02:41 into the mainstream.
02:43 NVIDIA has been on a tear of investments ever since, including A-list AI unicorns Cohere,
02:49 Hugging Face, and Inflection.
02:52 Sadiq said, "There was this little thing called Gen AI that got going.
02:57 You go from zero to like whatever.
02:59 It's infinite growth from zero."
03:02 In December, the company said it had announced 14 investments since the beginning of 2023,
03:07 in areas including health, enterprise, and logistics.
03:11 In one sign that things are still just ramping up, InVentures' website only launched last
03:15 month.
03:17 Sadiq told Forbes that InVentures has already "done a couple" of investments in the new
03:22 year, though he declined to provide further details.
03:26 Forbes spoke to seven NVIDIA portfolio companies, who declined to share specific terms of their
03:30 deals with the chip giant.
03:32 Some claimed to have gotten better access to NVIDIA's chips, right now the most sought-after
03:36 resource in Silicon Valley, though they did so without sharing specifics.
03:41 Others said they got no special treatment.
03:43 Jorge Torres, CEO of MindsDB, a startup that allows developers to connect AI models to
03:49 data sources, said, "A VIP pass would be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's just a little
03:55 bit better than if we didn't have this relationship."
03:59 InVentures told Forbes it doesn't allow prioritized access to GPUs.
04:03 As startups and tech giants alike compete in an arms race to train the most powerful
04:08 AI models, GPUs have become a new form of currency.
04:12 But Kanjong Kiu, CEO of MBU AI, a startup that aims to develop artificial intelligence
04:18 that can reason like humans, said that doesn't mean NVIDIA's portfolio companies didn't inquire
04:23 during the deal-making process.
04:25 Laughing, Kiu said, "We know we're not going to get preferential access, even though we
04:30 were like, 'Will we get preferential access?'"
04:34 NVIDIA and multiple portfolio company founders said there were no requirements or earmarks
04:38 for the startups to spend any of the capital on NVIDIA chips or other products.
04:44 For full coverage, check out Richard Nieves' piece on Forbes.com.
04:50 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:52 Thanks for tuning in.
04:53 See you next time.
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