Nvidia (NVDA) discusses funding its AI data supplier Mercor at a USD 20bln valuation, reports The Information

Nvidia taking strategic stakes in companies inside its own supply and demand chain is by now an established pattern: the chipmaker has historically recycled its cash generation into minority positions across AI labs, cloud providers and tooling firms, and those deals have tended to blur the line between customer, supplier and investee. The distinguishing feature here is that the target sits on the data-labelling side of the AI buildout, an upstream input rather than a compute buyer, which fits the broader pattern of large tech platforms securing scarce inputs through equity rather than contracts alone. Funding talks at a headline valuation of this size for a private data supplier also serve as a marker of where private-market AI pricing sits relative to listed peers, a comparison traders have used in past episodes to sanity-check the public AI complex. Two cautions recur in comparable episodes: talks reported by a single outlet often do not complete, and the round's final size and valuation frequently differ from the first report. The follow-ons worth tracking are confirmation from additional sources, whether the round is primary or secondary, and any disclosure obligations given Nvidia's scale of strategic investing. As a single-source report of discussions, the signal is tentative rather than confirmed.