Nvidia AI Financing Deal Mobilizes $500B With Wall Street Giants

Nvidia just asked Wall Street to treat its graphics chips like real estate. On Monday, the chipmaker unveiled a sweeping Nvidia AI financing initiative built with six of the world’s largest asset managers, aiming to unlock more than $500 billion in outside capital for data centers, chip factories and the power plants needed to run them. The announcement, confirmed by CNBC, the BBC and the Guardian, marks one of the most ambitious attempts yet to turn AI compute into something banks and pension funds can actually lend against.

Key takeaways

• Nvidia signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure.
• Nvidia will guarantee up to 25 percent of the residual value of its chips in individual financing deals, reviewed project by project.
• CEO Jensen Huang argues GPUs like the A100 keep working for close to a decade, pushing back on investor Michael Burry’s depreciation warnings.
• Morgan Stanley projects $3.5 trillion in hyperscaler spending between 2026 and 2028, while Apollo puts total AI infrastructure needs above $8 trillion.
• The Bank of England has flagged financial stability risks tied to highly leveraged AI companies and limited bank visibility into that exposure.

Nvidia’s $500 Billion Bet to Turn AI Chips Into Wall Street Assets

Nvidia wants compute to be treated as an investable asset class, not a depreciating piece of hardware sitting on a customer’s balance sheet. That is the core idea behind the new financing platforms, which are designed to let hyperscalers, frontier AI labs and enterprises tap institutional credit instead of funding data center buildouts entirely out of pocket.

Six Financial Giants, One Financing Platform

Nvidia signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish these financing structures, according to Nvidia’s own statement cited by CNBC. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the bank was “excited for the new opportunity to create a market for credit backed by NVIDIA compute,” describing the moment as part of “a pivotal moment of a historic AI investment cycle.” KKR co-CEOs Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall called compute “a critical infrastructure asset,” adding that after scaling their digital infrastructure approach, “delivery, not ambition, is the hard part.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink went further, framing the effort as the start of “the next future for financial engineering,” comparing it to the creation of mortgage-backed securities in the 1970s. Blackstone President Jon Gray said demand at Blackstone’s portfolio companies had surged sevenfold this year and predicted AI compute would eventually be viewed as “financeable” the way mortgage lenders view homes.

From One-Off Deals to Repeatable AI Factory Financing

Huang described the shift on X as a move away from one-off project financing toward repeatable platforms that can fund what he calls “AI factories” the same way power grids or transportation networks get financed. “In AI, compute is revenue,” Huang said, adding that Nvidia is “bringing the world’s leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure.”

He was careful to frame the $500 billion figure as an aggregate target spread over several years, not Nvidia revenue, not a single fund and not a commitment tied to any one customer. Nvidia has not disclosed specific terms, individual commitments or a firm timeline for deploying the capital. Nvidia’s stock dropped roughly 1.4 percent following the announcement, wiping out more than $70 billion in market value, according to the Financial Times.

Chip Residual Value Guarantee and Its Market Implications

To make its hardware easier to lend against, Nvidia is putting some of its own money behind the bet that its chips will hold value over time. That guarantee is the mechanism meant to address the biggest objection skeptics have raised about financing AI compute in the first place: depreciation risk.

How the 25% Guarantee Works

Nvidia plans to back individual financing projects with residual-value guarantees, covering up to 25 percent of the gap if a chip’s resale or reuse value falls short of expectations by the end of a financing term. Each case is reviewed on a project-by-project basis, and Huang has said this exposure is “significantly lower” than in other compute financing arrangements. La valutazione creditizia vera e propria, ossia l’analisi del cliente, della richiesta, dell’utilizzo, dei flussi di cassa e del valore residuo, still falls to the capital providers rather than to Nvidia itself.

Nvidia is reportedly also negotiating a similar guarantee tied to a 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio leased to OpenAI, an early signal of how the residual-value backstop might apply beyond the initial six-partner framework. Huang has pushed back on suggestions that Nvidia financing its own customers creates a circular arrangement, arguing the company’s share of the risk is deliberately kept smaller than what lenders typically absorb elsewhere.

Jensen Huang vs. Michael Burry on GPU Depreciation

This is where Huang’s argument runs directly into a public dispute with investor Michael Burry, who has called hyperscaler depreciation practices “one of the more common frauds of the modern era.” Burry argued that Nvidia’s two-to-three-year upgrade cycle makes five-to-seven-year useful-life assumptions unrealistic, and estimated depreciation could be understated by roughly $176 billion between 2026 and 2028 alone.

Huang’s counter is built around the A100, launched in 2020 and, by his account, still in commercial use six years later, with an economic lifespan stretching toward a decade thanks to ongoing improvements delivered through Nvidia’s CUDA software. As market evidence, he points to rental pricing that has climbed rather than collapsed: H100 annual contracts rose from $1.70 per GPU-hour in October 2025 to $2.35 by March 2026, while B200 capacity now runs between $5.30 and $7.05 per GPU-hour. Whether that pricing trend holds as newer chip generations ship remains an open question for the lenders now underwriting this depreciation risk on Nvidia’s word.

Market Context and Financial Stability Considerations

The scale of money being discussed here dwarfs the $500 billion headline figure, and that gap is exactly why Wall Street is racing to build financing infrastructure now rather than later. Morgan Stanley projects hyperscaler spending will hit $3.5 trillion between 2026 and 2028, while Apollo president Jim Zelter estimates total AI infrastructure investment needs at more than $8 trillion, calling modern compute “a scarce, mission-critical asset class” positioned to “drive significant long-term economic growth and productivity gains.”

Investment Projections and Industry Demand

Companies running on Nvidia chips, including Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic, have collectively spent more than $1 trillion on AI infrastructure over the past three years, according to figures cited by the BBC, and Nvidia’s own market value has climbed fivefold over that period. Other financing arrangements are already moving in parallel: BlackRock struck a deal with Meta last month to finance and take a majority stake in a Texas data center, while Anthropic separately arranged infrastructure investment with Macquarie Asset Management and Singapore’s GIC. Rathbones senior investment manager Jane Sydenham summed up the underlying tension to the BBC: “Nvidia is absolutely enormous and produces these chips that everybody needs for AI and it needs to keep facilitating the growth of AI,” but “the worry is that more and more money is going into these projects. Are they all going to earn the right return for the future?”

Financial Risks Highlighted by Experts and Institutions

This is a fair question for regulators too. The Bank of England warned in its July Financial Stability Report that the current pace of AI infrastructure spending rappresenta un fenomeno senza precedenti nella storia, e un evento avverso che colpisca società di intelligenza artificiale fortemente indebitate potrebbe propagarsi nelle condizioni di finanziamento mondiale e provocare una stretta creditizia. Secondo il rapporto, banche e società di credito privato dispongono di scarsa trasparenza riguardo ai loro own indirect exposure to that leverage. Moody’s has separately flagged that unprecedented capital expenditure levels are already squeezing free cash flow at major tech firms and pushing them toward heavier debt loads.

Taken together, these warnings frame why the structure of Nvidia’s residual-value guarantee matters well beyond one company’s balance sheet. If chip values hold up the way Huang describes, the financing platforms could genuinely expand who can afford to build AI infrastructure. If they don’t, the guarantee limits Nvidia’s own downside to a fraction of each deal while leaving banks, insurers and private credit funds holding the rest of the depreciation risk on a still largely untested asset class.

FAQ

What is Nvidia’s goal with the $500 billion AI infrastructure financing plan?

Nvidia aims to unlock over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI data centers, chip factories, and power plants through partnerships with major financial firms including Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR.

How does Nvidia reduce investment risk in its AI chips for financiers?

Nvidia guarantees up to 25 percent of the residual value of its chips at the end of financing terms, covering part of the depreciation risk on a project-by-project basis to make financing more attractive to lenders.

What arguments does Nvidia present to counter claims about rapid GPU depreciation?

CEO Jensen Huang states that key GPUs like the A100 have an economic lifespan approaching a decade, pointing to CUDA software updates that keep improving installed hardware and to rising GPU rental prices as evidence of sustained value.

Who are the major partners involved in Nvidia’s AI infrastructure financing initiative?

The initiative involves Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR as financial partners, working alongside Nvidia to establish the compute financing platforms.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.