Jensen Huang's Exit Leaves AI Startups Without Their Biggest Backer, as Asian Governments Seek Reassurance from Nvidia
Nvidia joined 105 startup funding rounds this year, often as the largest investor, and VCs say many of those calls were Huang's own. With a more cautious interim CEO in charge, founders fear a funding gap, while Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo move to check that Nvidia's commitments still stand.
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Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia's chief executive was first a story about one man and one company. Two days on, it is turning into a story about everyone who depended on him.
For startups, that means money. "It's like a bomb went off," one neocloud founder told TechCrunch on hearing that Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and led it for 33 years, had stepped down. For governments across Asia, it means supply deals and flagship projects that were negotiated with Huang personally. By Saturday, several of those governments had publicly checked that Nvidia's promises still hold.
At a glance
| Item | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia's 2026 deal count | 105 startup rounds, often as the largest investor | PitchBook, via TechCrunch |
| Who made the calls | Most big startup bets came from Huang himself, per one VC | Umesh Padval, Seligman Ventures, via TechCrunch |
| Interim CEO | Colette Kress, seen by one investor as "much more conservative" | TechCrunch |
| South Korea | Nvidia reaffirmed plan to supply 260,000 advanced GPUs | Science Ministry, via TechCrunch |
| Taiwan | Taipei says Nvidia's planned overseas headquarters is on track | Taipei city government, via TechCrunch |
| Japan | Industry Ministry will monitor Nvidia closely | Reuters, via TechCrunch |
The check-writer in chief
Nvidia has been one of the most active investors in artificial intelligence. It joined 105 funding rounds this year alone, often as the largest investor, according to PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch. "Nvidia is carrying almost every AI-native startup from application to neocloud," Shamillah Bankiya of Dawn Capital told TechCrunch.
The portfolio is long. Nvidia backed CoreWeave while it was still private and joined two of Crusoe's rounds, including a $1.4 billion Series E. It agreed to buy Hugging Face this year for $13 billion, a deal expected to close in 2027, and holds stakes in Mistral AI, Lambda and Black Forest Labs, TechCrunch reported. Last year, according to the Wall Street Journal as cited by TechCrunch, it put $800 million into a $2 billion Series B for the open-source lab Reflection AI before that startup had meaningful revenue.
Investors say many of those bets came from the top. Most significant decisions to invest in startups came from Huang himself, said Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, who has known Huang since serving on the board of Mellanox, the networking chipmaker Nvidia bought for about $7 billion in 2020.
Why Kress worries founders
The worry centers on Huang's interim successor, Colette Kress. "She's much more conservative," one investor told TechCrunch. "I don't think she's going to commit the same amount of money to keep the early-stage ecosystem going." TechCrunch reported that Kress is expected to make changes, especially to investments in startups tied to the data center build-out, where Huang's dealmaking had worried Wall Street.
The bets most at risk are the expensive ones: neoclouds, inference providers and open-weight model developers. One VC described a pattern in which infrastructure startups that needed $100 million to $500 million worth of GPUs would raise about half of that from Nvidia, at valuations of $1 billion or more, just to get started. Nvidia's name on the deal reassured everyone else. "When Nvidia was on the cap table, everyone felt safe," Padval said.
Investors now expect Nvidia to be pickier about new companies and to write smaller checks into its existing portfolio, which could push valuations down and make traditional VCs hesitate. Bankiya added a regional worry: "Jensen believed in open source and frankly speaking, Europe," she said, and losing that support outside the U.S. would leave a gap "that no one can fill."
Who could step in
Some investors hope that rival chipmakers and cloud giants will fill part of the gap. Dharmesh Thakker of Battery Ventures expects Big Tech to compete for Nvidia's role as the ecosystem's backer. But he doubts companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and AMD will put hundreds of millions of dollars into pre-revenue infrastructure startups the way Nvidia did. They are more likely to back mature startups that will use their chips and clouds.
TechCrunch also noted that Nvidia's generosity had a cost: by backing so many startups, it effectively locked them into its chips. A more cautious Nvidia could leave more room for competitors. Few investors expect Nvidia's slowdown, on its own, to stop the wider AI boom.
Asia checks its deals
The reaction in Asia was about supply and projects rather than venture rounds. South Korea's Science Ministry said Nvidia had reaffirmed its plan to supply 260,000 advanced GPUs to the country and to continue joint AI projects, TechCrunch reported. South Korea's government AI strategy council also held an emergency meeting on Friday to assess the impact, according to a local media report cited by TechCrunch.
In Taiwan, Economy Minister Kung Ming-shin said Huang's departure was unlikely to significantly change the growth of the global AI industry, according to local media. Taipei's city government said Nvidia's planned overseas headquarters in the city remains on track and that the company has met its contractual obligations so far.
In Japan, the Industry Ministry said it would closely monitor Nvidia, Reuters reported, calling the company an important player in Japan's AI chip industry. Deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki said it was too early to judge the global impact.
Singapore and China were dealing with the scandal behind the resignation. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs described its past investigation of Alice Huang, the former Megaspeed executive at the center of the affair, and said its investigation into Megaspeed and six other people is ongoing. China's foreign ministry had already called spy allegations against her groundless and on Friday restated its opposition to export controls, TechCrunch reported.
Why it matters
Nvidia did more than sell chips to the AI boom. It also helped pay for it, and investors say that role depended heavily on one person. If Kress pulls back, the companies that would feel it first are the ones that need the most capital before they earn anything: GPU clouds, inference startups and open-weight labs. Abroad, the quick public checks from Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo show how much national AI plans now depend on one American company's leadership.
What to watch
Watch whether Nvidia's next startup deals shrink in size or number, and whether Google, Amazon, Microsoft or AMD start leading the kinds of large, early infrastructure rounds Nvidia used to lead. Watch who the board picks as permanent CEO. In Asia, watch whether the 260,000-GPU South Korean deal and the Taipei headquarters stay on schedule.
How we reported this
DailyMech read both TechCrunch reports in full. Investor quotes are as TechCrunch reported them. Figures attributed to PitchBook and the Wall Street Journal, and government statements attributed to Reuters or local media, come from TechCrunch's summaries; DailyMech did not read those underlying reports. DailyMech contacted no one for this article.
Published November 14, 2026. Facts checked against the cited sources by DailyMech's AI writer.
Sources
- Jensen Huang's departure blasts big hole in AI startup funding, VCs and founders say, Marina Temkin and Dominic-Madori Davis, TechCrunch, Nov. 13, 2026 (fully read).
- Asian governments react to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's exit, Kate Park, TechCrunch, Nov. 14, 2026 (fully read).
DailyMech used AI tools to research and draft this article. Facts were checked against the cited sources by DailyMech's AI writer, not by a human editor.