Nvidia is adding powered land development to its growing portfolio of energy investments.
Last week, Cloverleaf Infrastructure announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with the mammoth chip maker. As part of the partnership, Nvidia is making a minority investment in the company “to further support the build-out of AI factories.”
Cloverleaf is the latest of a series of energy companies — ranging from nuclear and battery storage to grid software — that Nvidia has invested in over the past two years, both via its venture capital arm NVentures and through corporate development. As the relationship between AI and energy becomes more symbiotic, these investments suggest that Nvidia sees the energy infrastructure needed to power its chips as fundamental to its own ability to grow.
(Nvidia, which vies with Apple for the title of most valuable company in the world, is expected to report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.)
Energy-first data center development
These investments come in a few categories. The largest are in AI infrastructure companies — such as Helix Digital Infrastructure, a company to “accelerate the deployment of data centers, power and connectivity,” launched by KKR in June 2026 with Nvidia as an anchor investor — and power-focused data center developers.
Also this month, the company announced both a strategic investment in Lancium, a Blackstone-backed AI data center developer integrating grid interconnection, behind-the-meter generation, and storage, and a $1.5-billion investment in SB Energy, which builds “power-first” AI infrastructure.
Nvidia is also a high-profile investor in Crusoe, which is known for its energy-first approach to data centers, and for being the developer behind some of the largest AI data center campuses in the U.S., including OpenAI’s Stargate development in Abilene, Texas. The chip maker participated both in Crusoe’s $600-million Series D round in December 2024 and in its $1.375-billion Series E round in October 2025. As of last week, Axios reports that the company is discussing a potential IPO with at least four banks, though no timeline has been set yet.
It also invested in Firmus Technologies, an Australian company focused on developing energy-efficient AI factories across the Asia Pacific region, which raised over $1.35 billion in the past year. (Crucially, all these companies rely heavily on Nvidia’s GPUs, which has contributed to worries that Nvidia’s “circular” investments could create a bubble, artificially inflating demand and valuations.)
Powered land is a bit of a departure from these deals, but the Cloverleaf investment nonetheless serves the same purpose: getting AI infrastructure up and running, power included, as quickly as possible. And Cloverleaf, unlike several of Nvidia’s other investments, takes a renewables-forward approach, prioritizing land where renewable energy is easily accessed (though also uses gas as relevant).
Formed in 2024 by founders with backgrounds at developers like Pattern Energy and ConnectGen as well as at Microsoft, the company promptly raised $300 million to develop powered land for data centers. At the time, the industry’s attention was largely on chip bottlenecks, but Cloverleaf chief commercial officer Brian Janous told Latitude Media that powered land had already become “the most critical piece” of a data center’s capital stack. In the years since, that instinct has proved correct, as hyperscalers compete for places to build — and many other startups have pushed into the powered land race as well.
Other energy bottlenecks
While data centers and powered land may be most straightforwardly connected to Nvidia’s chip work, the company is making other energy bets as well, especially for companies working to clear bottlenecks. These investments come predominantly from Nvidia’s venture capital arm.
Through NVentures, it backs both Emerald AI and ThinkLabs, which seek to make the most of existing energy infrastructure through grid optimization. Emerald AI is developing an orchestration software to turn data centers into flexible grid assets, and it worked directly with Nvidia to bring online its first flexible data center, dubbed Aurora, alongside Digital Realty and EPRI in early 2026.
ThinkLabs, meanwhile, uses AI to build digital twins that can be used to generate real-time models and analytics for utilities and grid operators, to simplify planning and make it more efficient. The startup spun out of industrial conglomerate General Electric in April 2024, and raised a $28-million Series A in March 2026, with NVentures’ participation.
NVentures also participated in a March 2026 $54-million Series B round for Verse Enterprises, which develops software to help data centers leverage on-site energy resources such as off-grid batteries and solar to have a better grid connection.
In October 2025, Nvidia’s venture capital arm also invested in Redwood Materials, participating in the energy storage and battery recycling company’s $350-million Series E funding round.
When it comes to longer-term bets, on the other hand, Nvidia is backing both advanced nuclear and fusion. In June 2025, NVentures led a $650-million investment round in the nuclear reactor startup TerraPower, and in August of the same year it participated in an $863-million funding round for Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
