Nvidia's Jensen Huang admits he erred in not backing OpenAI, Anthropic early on

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted missing early investment opportunities with OpenAI and Anthropic, calling it his "miss" and a "mistake." He explained Nvidia wasn't positioned for the multi-billion-dollar investments these AI labs required then. Now, with Nvidia's stronger financial footing, the company has committed significant funding to both OpenAI and Anthropic.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has spoken openly about missing early investment opportunities with OpenAI and Anthropic, during a podcast with host Dwarkesh Patel.

Huang described the situation as his "miss" and a "mistake".

"At the time, I didn't deeply internalise how difficult it would be to build a foundation AI lab like OpenAI and Anthropic, and the fact that they needed huge investments from the supplier themselves," he said.

The Nvidia CEO explained that his company was not in a position to commit multi-billion-dollar investments into AI labs such as Anthropic at the time. In contrast, hyperscalers, including Google and Amazon Web Services, were able to step in early with large funding commitments, which in turn ensured that companies such as Anthropic relied on their computing infrastructure.