AI startups are still attracting huge checks, but the more important story may be who is writing them. DeepL raised $300 million on a $2 billion valuation, Scale AI secured $1 billion as its valuation nearly doubled to $13.8 billion, and French startup H raised a $220 million seed round at an undisclosed valuation.
Traditional institutional investors remain active in these rounds, including Accel, Index, and Y Combinator. Yet the latest wave also shows how major technology companies are trying to participate in the AI boom without necessarily buying startups outright.
Corporate money is moving deeper into AI startups
Scale AI offers a clear example of the shift. From its inception in 2016 through its Series E round in 2021, the company had drawn investment from institutional and angel investors. In its Series F, similar backers returned, but they were joined by Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, and the venture arms of Intel, AMD, Cisco, and ServiceNow.
H, a young French company building its own frontier models, also disclosed corporate participation. Amazon invested, as did Samsung’s VC arm and UiPath, an automation software company worth $10 billion today.
These are not isolated moves. Corporate investment in AI startups has become one of the defining patterns of the sector. The best-known example is Microsoft’s close relationship with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, but the same broader strategy now appears across multiple companies, rounds, and regions.
The rise of the quasi-merger concern
The concern for regulators is not just that large technology companies are investing. It is that some of these arrangements may give them influence over young AI companies without triggering the same level of scrutiny as a full acquisition.
That is why the term quasi-merger has become important. The idea is that a large company may gain control or strategic leverage through methods that stop short of a takeover. These can include strategic investments, close partnerships, or hiring founding teams and key staff.
Microsoft is said to own a 49% stake in OpenAI. That has drawn attention from antitrust regulators in the European Union and the U.K., even though the question of voting power remains separate from the question of influence.
Anthropic faces a similar kind of attention. The three-year-old company has raised north of $7 billion from numerous investors. Corporate investors include Google, SAP, and the venture arms of Salesforce and Zoom. Amazon, however, accounts for more than half of Anthropic’s fundraising to date after concluding a $4 billion investment in March.
The U.K. antitrust regulator, the CMA, confirmed last month that it was looking at the Amazon-Anthropic deal to determine whether it might qualify for an antitrust investigation. The issue is not whether Amazon owns a majority stake. The issue is whether the relationship creates enough influence to matter.
Hiring deals are also under the microscope
Equity stakes are only one part of the picture. The CMA also said it was looking into Microsoft’s recent acqui-hire of Inflection AI. That move followed Microsoft becoming Inflection’s biggest backer a year earlier.
In the Inflection AI case, Microsoft brought in the company’s founders and key colleagues to run a new consumer AI unit. Inflection AI was left as a smaller company focused on the enterprise segment.
This matters because it shows how AI competition can shift without a conventional acquisition. A startup can keep operating as a separate company, while a major backer gains the people, expertise, and strategic direction that made the startup notable in the first place.
The CMA also reviewed Microsoft’s recent $16 million investment in French AI startup Mistral. In that case, the regulator moved quickly and concluded that the deal did not qualify for investigation because of its relative size.
“The CMA has considered information submitted by Microsoft and Mistral AI, together with feedback received in response to its invitation to comment,” a CMA spokesperson said at the time. “Based on the evidence, the CMA does not believe that Microsoft has acquired material influence over Mistral AI as a result of the partnership and therefore does not qualify for investigation.”
Nvidia’s role is growing fast
Nvidia is not always grouped with the same Big Tech companies as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Alphabet. But in the AI market, its influence is difficult to ignore.
The company was valued at $770 billion this time last year. That figure has since grown to more than $2.5 trillion, making Nvidia the third most valuable company globally, behind Microsoft at $3.17 trillion and Apple at $2.87 trillion. It is now ahead of Meta at $1.18 trillion, Amazon at $1.88 trillion, and Alphabet at $2.15 trillion.
Nvidia has also become an active investor in AI startups. It has invested in Hugging Face alongside Amazon, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and others. It has also bought stakes in Cohere, Perplexity AI, Inflection AI, Cohesity, Mistral AI, Weka, Wayve, and other AI startups.
That investment activity gives Nvidia exposure to many parts of the AI ecosystem. It also places the company inside the same debate about how large technology players can shape the development of smaller AI companies without acquiring them outright.
Why smaller stakes can still matter
The central antitrust question is not limited to ownership size. A minority stake may still create influence, especially when the investor is a major customer, infrastructure provider, strategic partner, or industry gatekeeper.
For startups, corporate money can provide capital, credibility, and commercial pathways. For Big Tech companies, it can provide early access to important technology, insight into fast-moving markets, and a position close to potential future winners.
That is why regulators are paying attention to the structure of these deals. A company may avoid the formal risks of a full merger while still becoming a meaningful stakeholder in the future of an AI startup.
For now, Big Tech shows no sign of slowing its AI startup investment strategy. The open question is whether smaller equity stakes, strategic partnerships, and hiring arrangements will continue to receive lighter treatment, or whether regulators will treat them as another route to influence in a market that is still forming.