Nvidia on Monday said it would partner with lenders to help it finance the buildout of AI infrastructure through a series of vehicles totalling more than $500 billion. The consortium, which includes Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, will serve companies from frontier labs to hyperscalers, Nvidia said.
The chip giant has in recent months been backstopping its customers to help them buy Nvidia’s products, lending its balance sheet to OpenAI, among others. The decision to expand its lending and spread the risk of such investments shows there is a limit to how much the world’s most valuable company will singlehandedly finance the AI boom.
“These financing platforms will help customers access scarce compute at scale and build the DSX AI factories that will power every industry and country in the age of AI,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, referring to Nvidia’s proprietary datacenter design format.
The financing facilities will be a boon for startups and mature companies alike — but will also likely fuel concerns from some industry participants that Nvidia is fencing its customers into its own ecosystem. The financing packages will keep a huge amount of capital tethered to Nvidia, and away from fledgling or established competitors. Nvidia shares dipped on the news, which was first reported by the Financial Times.