NVIDIA today continued its support of the AI startup ecosystem with investments in three companies that are advancing the state of the art of GPU-accelerated data science.

Acting through its NVIDIA GPU Ventures arm, the company is investing in BlazingDB, an SQL data warehouse; Graphistry, a visual analysis data company; and H2O.ai, an open-source AI platform. These startups, all based in the U.S., align with NVIDIA's support of the GPU Open Analytics Initiative (GOAI), which was formed to foster the growth of GPU computing in accelerated analytics. "AI is fundamentally changing how we interact with data," said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA. "These three companies are all rising stars in the data science industry. Their enthusiastic participation in the GOAI open source ecosystem will be instrumental to their ultimate success."

BlazingDB uses GPUs to expedite the process of parsing through large sets of data. The company, founded in 2015, built a GPU-accelerated SQL analytics engine to analyze data already implemented in enterprise organizations.

Graphistry streamlines data investigations by combining GPUs with visual tools. Founded by two UC Berkeley alumni in 2014, it uses GPU-accelerated visual analytics and GPU cloud technology to increase data scale and reliability for developers and analysts.

H2O.ai seeks to make AI adoption more efficient by providing an accelerated machine learning engine to enterprises and developers. Founded in 2011, it launched Driverless AI earlier this year, making it easier for non-technical users to implement AI.

These investments are the latest additions to NVIDIA's expanding startup portfolio, which has added more than 10 companies in five countries over the past year. Among its latest investments are:

• ABEJA - Tokyo startup focused on AI-powered retail analytics systems
• Datalogue - New York AI data-mining platform developed out of Cornell University
• Deep Instinct - Israeli startup focused on cybersecurity
• Element AI - Montreal startup helps companies quickly integrate AI capabilities
• Fastdata.io - California startup offering streaming analytics software
• JingChi - Chinese self-driving startup developing an autonomous Uber-like service
• Optimus Ride - MIT spinoff developing fully autonomous vehicles
• SoundHound - Silicon Valley startup building voice-enabled AI solutions
• TempoQuest - Colorado startup doing GPU-accelerated weather forecasting
• TuSimple - Chinese autonomous truck startup
• Zebra Medical - Israeli startup using AI to read medical images