00:00It's not a venture capital company, but its strategic part, the VC arm of it, is just becoming a juggernaut in the space.
00:08Yeah, it's definitely become the $5 trillion benefactor of most of the AI industry right now.
00:12What we reported here is that just through October of this year, NVIDIA has backed 59 different AI startups,
00:19which already outpaces all of what it did last year.
00:22I think it's more than triple or quadruple what it did a couple of years ago.
00:25And there's no sign of it slowing down.
00:27And I think there's a clear desire here to kind of support the wider ecosystem and industry in ways that probably come back and benefit NVIDIA.
00:35One of the things we mentioned in the story is circular financing or the circular nature of what's happening in the AI ecosystem.
00:46What would NVIDIA say about that?
00:48You know, what they've said to us and to other outlets certainly is that there is no obligation here
00:54that the companies that it provides money to have to then turn around and buy NVIDIA chips.
00:58And that may be true.
00:59What's also true is that obviously NVIDIA is the market leader for AI chips.
01:03So if it helps prop up dozens or hundreds of AI startups with capital, some of that money is going to come back to NVIDIA.
01:09And ultimately, that feels part of a larger strategy.
01:11As we all know, NVIDIA is very dependent on a handful of large tech firms who buy up the majority of its chips.
01:18If it can build future market leaders or even smaller firms with more capital, that's going to benefit and help diversify its revenue stream.
01:25There's a great anecdote in the story coming from Irvin Srinivas, who's over at Perplexity, just saying how Jensen gets it done in terms of giving him access to GPUs that he needs.
01:34Exactly.
01:35And I think it's not just about financial resources.
01:37It's about technical know-how.
01:39It's about the network.
01:40And fundamentally, it's about being able to brand yourself as an NVIDIA-backed company that carries a lot of bona fides right now.
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