John Malone and Jensen Huang have more in common than one might initially think. Let's consider NVIDIA's trajectory: it's steadily accumulating equity stakes in various AI companies, including an increased position in Perplexity. The value of these holdings extends far beyond simply guaranteeing demand for its own chips. Over time, this portfolio of investments could generate substantial paper returns and further cement CEO Jensen Huang's status as a kingmaker in the AI industry.

One could even envision a future where NVIDIA spins off its entire investment portfolio into a standalone entity, unlocking the full value of these assets. This approach echoes the early days of John Malone's media empire-building (a figure who was already an industry titan before many in the AI sector were even born). During the 1980s, Malone led TCI, the early cable television giant, investing in nascent content producers like Discovery Channel, BET, and Turner Broadcasting—channels that would land on TCI and other cable networks.

These investments served a dual purpose: by supporting these fledgling content companies, cable platforms could offer differentiated programming that convinced consumers to pay for cable subscriptions rather than relying solely on free over-the-air broadcasts. This wasn't mere charity; content startups needed the distribution access Malone controlled, giving him leverage to acquire equity at highly attractive prices. Malone consolidated all these equity assets into Liberty Media, a separate business unit under TCI. In 1999, after selling TCI to AT&T, Liberty Media was spun off as an independent public company. Many of those cable channels later grew into commercial giants, with the value of those stakes appreciating significantly—Discovery eventually evolved into Warner Bros. Discovery. Malone and his team used this asset base to incubate and operate multiple public companies through a continuous series of capital transactions.

Of course, there's no guarantee that Huang will demonstrate Malone's masterful capital maneuvering (a skill few CEOs possess), nor can we be certain the investment portfolio will hold its value forever. These stakes could theoretically become worthless, though that outcome seems unlikely. NVIDIA's investment footprint is remarkably broad: it includes positions in public companies like SpaceX, Nebius, and CoreWeave—all of which are loyal buyers of NVIDIA chips—as well as stakes in private firms such as OpenAI and Perplexity. Some investments serve to strengthen the financial position of chip-purchasing customers, with CoreWeave and Nebius being prime examples. As previously reported, certain recent investments, such as the $6 billion licensing and talent acquisition deal with AI model startup Poolside, also support NVIDIA's development of its in-house Nemotron large language models.

When NVIDIA reports its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, we'll likely get updated figures on the size of its private-company investment portfolio. According to securities filings, NVIDIA's investments in private companies had reached $42.3 billion as of March 31. Regarding public-company stakes, a filing earlier this month revealed that as of June 30, NVIDIA held public equity positions in companies like SpaceX and CoreWeave valued at $63 billion—up from just $18.4 billion on March 31. This surge stems partly from rising share prices at companies like Intel and CoreWeave, plus the addition of a $21 billion stake in SpaceX. Following the Malone playbook of spinning off Liberty Media, separating these investment assets into an independent company would give investors direct exposure to a diversified basket of AI enterprises while simultaneously expanding Huang's capital transaction flexibility. It's certainly a compelling scenario worth considering!