Graphics chip producer Nvidia is not new to early-stage investment, having formed corporate venture unit Nvidia GPU Ventures 15 years ago. But the past year is when it took a big step up to become one of the pre-eminent CVC investors, primarily through the NVentures unit headed by Mohamed Siddeek.
That rise mirrored the ascension of Nvidia itself, which became the world’s third most valuable company on the back of demand for its chips in generative AI products. While the firm’s larger investments are made through Vishal Bhagwan’s corporate development team, Siddeek’s NVentures targets earlier-stage startups.
“They focus on enhancing Nvidia’s platform, and they do that through acquisitions, partnerships and investments,” Siddeek told Global Corporate Venturing earlier this year.
“We focus on enhancing the platforms of companies that we invest in, through all the technical and go-to-market excellence we have at Nvidia. In terms of focus, it’s very different.”
That focus is also increasingly wide ranging. Nvidia GPU Ventures’ narrower strategic brief is long gone and NVentures is a very different beast. It is actively chasing financial returns and is targeting areas from healthcare technology and pharmaceuticals to advanced manufacturing as part of an investment brief connecting to anything AI.
“It’s really any place Nvidia touches,” Siddeek says. “That’s the first filter, and then there’s probably another filter on top of that where you look at which areas are investible.
“That still covers a fairly large area, so from a vertical standpoint it could be various aspects of healthcare, it could be manufacturing – there are a number of verticals. And then, from a horizontal standpoint, it could be tools or applications or whatever.”
The expansion of Nvidia’s investment strategy has led to NVentures leading rounds for Neocis, the creator of a dental surgery system that uses advanced robotics, and Relation Therapeutics, a company applying experimental and computational technology to drug discovery, in 2024.
Those startups form part of a portfolio that also includes Outrider, which is working on automation technology for logistics yards, as well as AI video creation unicorn Synthesia and Flywheel.io, developer of a data management platform for scientists. It is an impressive achievement for a unit that’s been operating officially for less than 18 months.
Nvidia hired Siddeek in 2021 as a corporate vice president and he arrived with a background in growth-stage venture funding. He logged nearly nine years at Mubadala and headed investments for the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund’s technology and telecom unit, before moving on to Softbank’s $99bn Vision Fund. But he was never going to be an ideal fit at a mega fund that focused most heavily on consumer startups.
This is not Siddeek’s first time at the firm either, he was an investor relations manager at Nvidia in the early 2000s and says a big incentive to return was the chance to work with founding CEO Jensen Huang again. Another was that Nvidia’s tech expertise gives it an edge when it comes to interacting with startups.
“From an investment standpoint, I wanted to be at a place where we had a value proposition that’s unique to the market”
“From an investment standpoint, I wanted to be at a place where we had a value proposition that’s unique to the market,” he says. “I could go to a company and provide something no other financial VC or corporate VC could and get a seat at the table.”
NVentures is still keeping a low profile to some extent. Its website doesn’t have a complete portfolio list or staff details, but Siddeek has gradually grown the team and he intends to keep exploring new areas – financial services is a sector he believes could be a good fit – as it continues to make its mark.
“We’ve got a great cadence and the market knows us,” Siddeek says. “Internally and externally, we’ve built great relationships and we really want to take it to the next level and find need and opportunities. Really expand the ecosystem. Ultimately, it’s all about the ecosystem for us. We do this in so many different ways and NVentures is just one vehicle to do that.”
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