Jensen Huang’s departure blasts big hole in AI startup funding, VCs and founders say

Investors told TechCrunch that Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO leaves AI startups without one of their largest backers, since Nvidia participated in 105 funding rounds this year alone, often as the largest investor. Interim CEO Colette Kress is expected to be more conservative with startup investments, which VCs say could affect dealmaking, valuations and funding, especially for neoclouds, inference providers and open weight model companies. Some investors hope large cloud companies and other chipmakers will fill the gap, though they doubt rivals will fund pre-revenue infrastructure startups at the scale Nvidia did.