No one is more unequivocally synonymous with the AI boom than Jensen Huang.
The Nvidia CEO—a hard-charging engineer whose first job was washing dishes at Denny’s—has become the axis on which all AI seemingly turns. Nvidia’s GPUs are the essential and hard-to-get “shovels” of AI, and demand has led to the company’s valuation in the public markets reaching an astonishing $5 trillion-plus. (Nvidia is also functionally the central bank of the circular AI economy.) In AI, all roads lead to Nvidia, and especially to Huang himself.
Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn and Beatrice Nolan sat down with Huang in London this week, where Huang sounded off on the headline-grabbing cybersecurity incidents of recent months, including the moment where OpenAI agents autonomously coordinated to attack startup Hugging Face. (Nvidia, notably, agreed in September to acquire Hugging Face, an open source platform, for almost $13 billion.) As Kahn and Nolan write:
Huang told Fortune that the incidents so far could all have been avoided with stronger containment and monitoring of AI agents. He compared the problem to the early consumer internet, when clicking on a website could infect a PC with a virus. The fix was for browsers to run websites in isolation, so they couldn’t touch the rest of the computer. Huang says AI agents need the same treatment and should be sealed inside a secure container where they can’t do damage beyond what they’re allowed access to.
Huang also told Fortune that he’s averse to the AI doomerism in the air of late. He didn’t name names, but you can guess who he’s referring to (say, Anthropic, last valued at $965 billion in May, which been central to much of the “AI will kill us all” discourse. The company has been rumored to be preparing—and postponing—its IPO for months.) To Huang, the answer is simple: if someone believes AI is that dangerous and beyond control, they should just stop, as Kahn and Nolan write:
Huang also shrugged off warnings of existential risks from AI that have come from many within the leading AI companies, including executives such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, telling Fortune the technology was “completely in our control.”
“I don’t know why anybody would want to support the advancement of a technology that’s going to result, you know, in the end of human civilization as we know it. And so, if they believe that, they really ought to stop working on it,” he said.
My personal interpretation of Huang’s comments: He seems like a man who’s begun to lose patience, ultimately seeing the warnings as a kind of fear-mongering and—perhaps, an eschewing of responsibility.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
VENTURE CAPITAL
– Ramp, a New York-based financial operations software company, raised $1.85 billion in funding. Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital, and Avenir Growth led the round and were joined by investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, T. Rowe Price, D1 Capital Partners, Greenoaks, ICONIQ, GIC, Coatue, and General Catalyst.
– North.cloud, a New York-based developer of software for managing cloud, AI, and data spending, raised $60 million in Series B funding. PeakSpan Capital led the round and was joined by Litquidity Ventures, Companyon Ventures, Alpaca, Uncommon Denominator, Gaingels, and Mana Ventures.
– Holyvolt, a Stockholm-based developer of battery materials using AI, raised $45 million in funding from Zone II, CC.VC, and angel investors.
– Sunbound, a Washington, D.C.-based developer of AI-powered revenue management software for senior living operators, raised $24 million in Series A funding. TTV Capital led the round and was joined by Bling Capital, Fika Ventures, Live Oak Bank, and Ziegler Linkage Fund.
– Opsin, a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of security and governance software for AI agents, raised $21 million in funding. SYN Ventures and Race Capital led the round.
– Matters, a Stockholm-based developer of an AI-powered personal finance platform, raised $5 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Jakob Johansson, Knut Frängsmyr, Douglas Stark, Johan Bladh, Patrik Tran, and Per Widerstrom.
– Silvia Bio, a Sheffield, U.K.-based developer of technology and additives to improve biologic drug manufacturing, raised £3 million ($4 million) in seed funding. Northern Gritstone led the round and was joined by Parkwalk Northern Universities Venture Fund, UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, Wren Capital, and angel investors.
PRIVATE EQUITY
– A consortium led by GTCR and including Elliott Investment Management agreed to acquire CCC Intelligent Solutions, a Chicago-based provider of software for the insurance and automotive repair industries, in an all-cash transaction with an enterprise value of approximately $6.1 billion.
– PACT Capital Partners acquired a minority stake in Sterling Investment Partners, a Greenwich, Conn.-based private equity firm focused on business services and distribution companies. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
OTHER
– Sunbound acquired Richter Healthcare Consultants, a Twinsburg, Ohio-based provider of revenue management, accounting, and consulting services for senior living and post-acute care operators. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
– OrbiMed, a New York-based healthcare investment firm, raised $3 billion across two funds: more than $1.9 billion for its tenth private investment fund focused on U.S. and European life sciences companies, and more than $1 billion for its sixth Asia fund focused on healthcare growth equity and venture capital investments.
PEOPLE
– Overture, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, hired Lucie Hankin as an investment partner. Previously, she led venture strategy at Grok Ventures.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: fortune.com
