Nvidia deepens early-stage push into India AI startups

Nvidia is moving earlier in India’s AI startup pipeline, partnering with the new venture firm Activate and expanding ties with multiple local and global investors to reach technical teams before companies are even formally incorporated, according to TechCrunch.

The headline partnership is with Activate, which plans to back roughly 25–30 AI startups from a $75 million debut fund while giving those teams preferential access to Nvidia’s technical expertise. Activate’s founder Aakrit Vaish describes the approach as “inception investing”: meeting engineers months before formation and shaping the company as it emerges. Nvidia also announced additional India-focused collaborations, including work with nonprofit AI Grants India to support more than 10,000 early-stage founders over the next year, and relationships with venture firms such as Accel, Peak XV, Z47, Elevation Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners, TechCrunch reports.

Nvidia’s stated logic is clear: the earlier it becomes the default compute and tooling choice, the more likely a startup is to scale on Nvidia hardware and software. Vaish told TechCrunch that compute consumption grows as startups mature, making early technical engagement a long-term revenue play. Nvidia already runs its Inception program in India with over 4,000 startups enrolled.

This is more than “supporting founders.” It is vertical integration by softer means: capital, mentorship, and ecosystem access bundled with an implicit dependency on CUDA, Nvidia’s software stack that effectively functions as the de facto operating system for much of modern AI. When a startup’s prototypes, hiring, and model-serving assumptions are built around CUDA and Nvidia’s GPU roadmaps, switching costs become existential. The result is a market where startups can end up as resellers of Nvidia’s margins—wrapping product narratives around scarce GPUs—rather than building durable differentiation.

The timing is also political theater. TechCrunch notes the announcements landed as India hosted its AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google present; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was scheduled to attend but skipped due to “unforeseen circumstances,” sending a senior delegation led by EVP Jay Puri instead.

For India, the upside is real: access to expertise, developer tooling, and scarce compute can accelerate a domestic AI scene. The risk is that the country becomes a growth market for a foreign compute monopoly, with local innovation taxed via platform rents and dependency on supply-constrained hardware. If governments later respond with “strategic” GPU allocation, quotas, or subsidy schemes, the ecosystem may discover it has recreated industrial policy—just with a California vendor setting the rules.

Nvidia is betting that the future of Indian AI will be written in CUDA. The VCs are helping with distribution.