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If you’re in need of a billion or two in cash, why not hit up Jensen Huang? The Nvidia CEO has plenty of money to spare, particularly if you’re in business with him in some way. Nvidia’s announcement on Wednesday that it was putting $2 billion into Nebius, a European AI data center developer, was the fourth investment in a business partner Nvidia has announced this month.
Earlier this week the chip giant unveiled a partnership with Thinking Machines Lab, involving a “significant investment” by the chip designer in the AI startup. Last week Nvidia announced it was putting $2 billion into Coherent and the same into Lumentum, two companies involved in making lasers and other highly sophisticated components for data centers.
That followed its $30 billion commitment to OpenAI at the end of February. In total, since its fiscal 2027 year began at the end of January, Nvidia has publicly committed to making fresh investments of more than $36 billion in other companies. (For more on Nvidia’s Nebius investment, check out The Information’s TITV today.)
That suggests this year will be even more active than fiscal 2026, when Nvidia invested $17.5 billion in AI startups and other private firms, according to a securities filing, on top of more than $9 billion on stakes in public companies such as Intel, CoreWeave and Synopsys.
Nvidia certainly has the cash. Analysts estimate it will generate $180 billion in free cash flow—the amount of cash its operations produce, less capital expenditures, in fiscal 2027, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. That’s nearly double the $97 billion it produced last fiscal year.
Even if it spends a third of that on stock buybacks—the amount of its authorized buyback program—that still leaves plenty of cash for Huang to invest. And while he’s continuing to put money into Nvidia chip customers—hence the recent investments in Nebius, Thinking Machines and OpenAI—the Coherent and Lumentum investments are different.
Those two companies are both suppliers to Nvidia, and the investments it is making in them aim to advance development of new data center technologies. Nvidia is using its cash to shape the future of the AI data center industry. (For more on Nvidia’s investment strategy, see this story).
Brendan Carr vs. Amazon
Is Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr angling for an eventual job with Elon Musk? That’s what a space policy insider asked me recently—and it’s hard to blame them for wondering!
In a post on X today, Carr blasted SpaceX competitor Amazon for petitioning the FCC to deny SpaceX’s recent request for permission to launch a million satellites, part of its plan to put data centers in space. Amazon pointed out that SpaceX’s petition was light on details, describing it as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” as well as “a speculative placeholder rather than a complete application under the commission’s rules.”
Since the FCC regulates when and how companies can launch and use satellites, mudslinging in FCC filings is relatively common among space and telecom firms. But Carr’s response was unusually public for an FCC chair. On X, he said Amazon should “focus on the fact” that it’s not on track to meet an upcoming FCC deadline to deploy 1,600 satellites for its Leo satellite internet constellation by this summer, “rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit.”
Carr is correct that Amazon is far behind SpaceX—Amazon has only launched about 200 satellites and has asked the FCC for an extension—but that doesn’t mean its points about SpaceX’s orbital data center plan are incorrect. (Read more on the dispute.)
While Carr’s willingness to publicly attack Amazon caught me off guard, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, when I ran into Carr at a conference last week and asked him about SpaceX’s plans for data centers in space, he called the concept “awesome.”—Theo Wayt
In Other News
• Amazon raised $37 billion in bonds in the U.S., the company confirmed in a securities filing on Wednesday, buttressing its balance sheet as it ramps up its investment in AI. The bonds range from two-year to 50-year notes. Separately, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the company raised an additional $16.8 billion in euro-denominated bonds in Europe.
• Tesla and xAI are working together on a joint AI project, Elon Musk said Wednesday in an X post. The move, which comes after turnover at xAI, is the latest shift in his plan to build AI that could replace white-collar workers.
• A cybersecurity agency in China issued a warning about the security risks of using OpenClaw, the viral AI agent builder that has become wildly popular in the country.
• Uber announced it would offer the Zoox robotaxi to customers starting this year. This is the first time the Amazon-owned self-driving–car company has partnered with an outside ride-hailing app.
• Shopify Chief Financial Officer Jeff Hoffmeister said the e-commerce software company wasn’t yet seeing many transactions completed by AI shopping tools, even though shoppers are increasingly using chatbots to look for product recommendations.
• Online retailer Quince announced a new $500 million funding round Wednesday, more than doubling the company’s previous valuation to over $10 billion, including the investment. The announcement confirms a report by The Information last week that the company was in talks with investors.
• Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity startup Wiz, the companies announced on Wednesday. Wiz will become part of Google Cloud, but Wiz customers can continue to use different cloud providers.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today’s episode of TITV in which we unpack Nvidia’s Nebius investment and Meta’s new custom chips.
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