I watched Nvidia's Jensen Huang work the room in London. He brought big checks — and a blunt message

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang draws a crowd wherever he goes.

In an old converted church in West London on Wednesday night, Huang stood on a pop-up stage in front of politicians, investors, tech execs and journalists, announcing the chip giant was taking stakes in five U.K. startups. 

"We're not your largest investor, but we are your best investor," he proclaimed. "I'm gonna invest in you, I'm gonna invest in you," he shouted, pointing at the founders. His appearance in London was part of a European tour ahead of Nvidia's GTC event in Berlin next week. 

Earlier, he'd searched out U.K. neocloud Nscale CEO Josh Payne in the crowd, declaring, "last year you were zero." 

"Now look at them," he said. "We invested in you, I attracted a whole bunch of investors to you." Nscale could be the most valuable British company in a decade, Huang said to cheers from the crowd.

The Nvidia boss certainly doesn't lack for confidence. 

Co-founder, President and CEO of US technology company Nvidia, Jensen Huang, gestures during a press briefing in Paris on Oct. 13, 2026.

Joel Saget | AFP | Getty Images

The warm reception Huang regularly receives is a sign of just how much sway he holds in the AI industry.

Nvidia has a near monopoly over the most powerful AI chips and Huang courts tech execs and world leaders with ease. He's a near constant presence at U.S. President Donald Trump's side at state dinners and visits. 

In London, after the pomp and ceremony of Huang's speech, he emerged around 40 minutes late to a media huddle outside the front of the church.

"The Prime Minister [Andy Burnham] and I had a nice whiskey together. He's a whiskey man," he told reporters. Later, Huang said he'd be meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz "in a couple of days."

Huang spoke to journalists for nearly an hour that evening — a fair effort considering he'd only eaten a "quarter of a quarter" of a sandwich that day — dishing out praise and criticism to Europe with a bombastic assuredness. 

"Nothing pains me more, frankly, than to see one of the most technologically advanced countries to be left so far behind in technology," he said, referring to Germany.

And the U.K. didn't escape scot-free. "If you tell an entrepreneur there's one in a million chance they can succeed, that entrepreneur says, 'So you're telling me there's a chance?' But in the UK, somehow there's 999,000... reasons to fail."

The CEO was also bullish on Europe's chances of succeeding with AI, not least, presumably, because Nvidia now has stakes in so many of the region's most promising startups.

On Wednesday those lucky startups were biotechs Prima Mente and Boltz, project delivery platform Foresight, algorithm discovery startup Hiverge and quantum company Riverlane. Those companies, alongside others in the U.K. that Nvidia isn't naming, will be the recipients of $1.16 billion of Nvidia cash. 

Earlier in the week the chip giant announced it was taking stakes in a number of French startups.

It's all part of a major push by Nvidia to build out holdings across the AI stack. Among the recipients of funding from Nvidia have been the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Intel and XAI. 

The chip giant has participated in 116 investment rounds in 2026 so far, according to Dealroom, up from just 12 in 2022. 

An uncaptioned image posted on the company's website appears to show Starshield technology in orbit.

SpaceX