They invested in Anthropic and OpenAI in order to keep them invested in Nvidia's ecosystem. If Google and Amazon were throwing deals at OpenAI and Anthropic to get them to build on their hardware, Nvidia had to counter.
Lastly, Nvidia invests in Neoclouds because big tech is building their own chips to compete against Nvidia. Why shouldn't Nvidia invest in Neoclouds and ensure that they don't get crushed by hyperscalers? They tried to compete directly with hyperscalers with DGX Cloud in 2023 but decided to not compete against their customers by 2025. Instead, they're backing Neoclouds. Makes more sense.
They have the cash. Instead of returning the cash to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, it's smart that they're putting it to use strategically.
If they just returned all the cash to shareholders, 5 years from now, people might complain why didn't Nvidia strengthen their grip on the market with their cash?
nephihaha•49m ago