Jensen Huang's resignation as chief executive of Nvidia has sent a shock through the AI startup world — and not just because of the share price. Venture capitalists and founders say the departure removes one of the ecosystem's biggest champions and, quite possibly, one of its biggest sources of cash.

Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and led it for 33 years, stepped down on November 12. Chief financial officer Colette Kress is serving as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor. For the startups that depended on Nvidia's money, the change could not come at a worse time.

105 rounds this year — often as the largest investor

Over the last several years, Nvidia has been one of the most prolific investors in the AI boom, pouring tens of billions of dollars into startups every year. According to PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch, the company took part in 105 funding rounds in 2026 alone, often as the largest investor in the round.

Many of those decisions came from Huang himself, investors say. "Most of the significant decisions to invest in startups often came from Jensen himself," Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, told TechCrunch. Maria Davidson, founder of Relational Capital, put it more bluntly: "If that direction changes, it'll be a big blow to so many young companies."

The scale of the bets was extraordinary. Nvidia backed CoreWeave while it was still private and took part in two of Crusoe's rounds, including its $1.4 billion Series E. Last year it wrote an $800 million cheque into a $2 billion Series B for Reflection AI before the startup had begun earning meaningful revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal. It has also agreed to buy Hugging Face for $13 billion, and backed Mistral AI, Lambda and Black Forest Labs.

For infrastructure companies, Nvidia's money was often the foundation of the whole round. Firms that needed $100 million to $500 million worth of graphics processors would frequently raise about half of that amount from Nvidia at valuations of $1 billion or more, one venture capitalist told TechCrunch. "Nvidia is carrying almost every AI-native startup from application to neocloud," Shamillah Bankiya of Dawn Capital said.

A more cautious Nvidia under Kress

Investors now expect that flow of capital to slow. Kress, a longtime Nvidia finance chief, is seen as far more conservative than Huang on startup investing, and the company is expected to become more selective about new companies it backs while writing smaller cheques into its existing portfolio. That, founders fear, will push valuations down across the sector.

"When Nvidia was on the cap table, everyone felt safe," Padval said. Without that backing, traditional venture firms are likely to think twice before writing cheques into AI infrastructure startups — and may pause some deals altogether until a clear successor strategy emerges.

Who fills the gap?

Some investors hope Big Tech rivals will step in. Dharmesh Thakker, a general partner at Battery Ventures, expects companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and AMD to compete for Nvidia's investment crown. But he doubts they will put hundreds of millions of dollars into pre-revenue startups the way Huang's Nvidia did.

For now, the AI funding boom that Huang helped bankroll faces its first real test without him. Founders who built their plans around Nvidia's largesse are bracing for smaller rounds, lower valuations and longer waits — and the wider market is watching whether anyone else is willing to pick up the chequebook he left behind.