Nvidia's Potential Anchor Investment
Nvidia is in discussions to become an anchor investor in Anthropic's planned initial public offering, according to Reuters. A source indicated the chipmaker could put in as much as $10 billion. The AI company behind the Claude models is reportedly aiming to raise up to $100 billion in a listing that might value it at approximately $2 trillion. Reuters has also reported that the IPO could be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections in November. Neither company has confirmed the talks, and the plans could still change.[S1]
Nvidia has put money into Anthropic before. Back in November 2025, the chipmaker said it would put in as much as $10 billion, while Microsoft agreed to contribute up to $5 billion. Anthropic, for its part, promised to buy $30 billion worth of Azure computing capacity. That first Nvidia arrangement covered as much as 1 gigawatt of compute running on Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin platforms. Then in March, CEO Jensen Huang indicated the $10 billion Anthropic stake would likely be Nvidia's final one, noting that Anthropic was headed toward going public.[S1]
What the Investment Would Buy
If Anthropic is valued at $2 trillion, a $10 billion investment works out to roughly half a percent of the company. Within a $100 billion raise, that amounts to a tenth—meaningful for the offering, yet only a sliver of the whole business. Nvidia has done this kind of thing before, serving as one of 10 cornerstone backers in Arm Holdings' 2023 listing. That group signaled interest in purchasing as much as $735 million of stock at the IPO price, on equal terms with other investors. Should Anthropic's deal mirror that structure, Nvidia's money would buy the same shares at the same price as everyone else. The chief benefit would probably be the message sent: an early commitment from such a large backer could calm other buyers.[S1]
So far, though, the reported discussions don't appear to include a hardware commitment resembling the 2025 one. Anthropic has been spreading its compute sourcing across multiple providers. It has secured up to 5 gigawatts of fresh capacity from Amazon, plus another 5 gigawatts built on tensor processing units from Alphabet's Google. The company is also assembling a team to develop its own chips, even as it says it will keep relying on hardware from various suppliers, Nvidia among them. Anthropic has said part of its newest funding round would help expand compute for Claude demand. IPO proceeds could be used the same way, with some potentially returning to Nvidia via the Nvidia-based capacity Anthropic purchases. In effect, Nvidia would be funding its own demand while paying to stay near a customer that also buys from competitors.[S1]
Nvidia's Growing Investment Portfolio
For Nvidia, $10 billion isn't a huge amount. During the three months ending July 26—its fiscal 2027 second quarter—the company brought in $59.7 billion, over double the profit from a year earlier. Revenue growth climbed to 106% year over year, faster than the prior quarter's 85%. These stakes are piling up fast. Nvidia listed its holdings in private companies at $47.9 billion as of July 26, versus $22.3 billion in late January when its fiscal year began, and only $3.8 billion a year before that. Counting public holdings too, equity investments reached $99 billion as of July 26, with $25 billion more pledged. Put differently, private stakes grew more than twelvefold in a year when quarterly revenue about doubled.[S1]
Nvidia's investment gains and its product sales now hinge on the same factor: AI spending. Were that spending to slow, Nvidia might see both weaker orders and writedowns on its holdings at once. All the same, a single $10 billion check may not move the needle much for Nvidia—it equals roughly a sixth of one quarter's profit, and keeping a big customer close is arguably a worthwhile use of cash. At around $225 at the time of writing, the shares trade at about 14 times projected fiscal 2028 earnings, a reasonable level for a company expanding this quickly, in this view. What matters most to watch is how big that investment portfolio eventually becomes.[S1]
