NVIDIA (NVDA.US) is positioning its artificial intelligence chips as a new asset class for Wall Street, forging partnerships with six major asset managers to launch a financing initiative. The plan aims to unlock up to $500 billion in capital by treating computing infrastructure like commercial real estate or toll roads, offering loans secured against it.
NVIDIA announced on Monday that it has signed memoranda of understanding with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to create a financing platform for its clients. For the first time, executives from all seven firms appeared together in a live CNBC interview to explain the collaboration. The initiative is designed to channel more than $500 billion in third-party capital to hyperscale cloud providers, leading AI labs, and various enterprises for building data centers and purchasing NVIDIA hardware. This could mark a major shift in AI infrastructure financing, as institutional credit, insurance funds, and private capital are used to backstop GPUs and data centers, helping end-users secure funding without straining their own balance sheets.
"This is truly the first time a technology chip has become an investable asset class," said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. "These chips are now income-producing assets. They are productive, long-lived, interchangeable, and flexible." Huang argued that because NVIDIA hardware is widely adopted and can be moved between clients, lenders can reliably view computing power as an asset with long-term revenue potential. In the past, GPUs were typically seen as hardware that depreciates quickly. NVIDIA's move aims to overturn this perception, transforming AI computing into a long-term, financeable infrastructure asset. However, skeptics may still worry about whether existing AI chips can retain value as newer generations are released.
"Fundamentally, what makes this industry and this computing approach unique is that the computer has now become part of the infrastructure – like electricity or the internet – so you have to view it from an infrastructure perspective," Huang said in the interview. Alternative asset managers have been keen to invest in digital infrastructure in recent years, channeling institutional and insurance capital into project financing. Apollo and Blackstone, for instance, have already arranged debt and equity financing for companies like Anthropic. This financing push comes after global markets experienced turmoil in July, when investors began questioning whether tech giants' massive spending on AI would generate returns. As hyperscalers plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers and hardware, rating agencies like Moody's have warned that unprecedented capital expenditure is beginning to squeeze free cash flow and force tech giants to take on more debt.
This marks a new chapter in "financial engineering." In a Monday press release, Wall Street titans including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Blackstone President Jon Gray, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said computing power has rapidly evolved into a key asset class driving the next phase of global economic growth. "We are at a critical moment in the historic AI investment cycle," Solomon said in the statement. "Our roles in both investing and distribution reflect our confidence in NVIDIA's leadership and our excitement about the opportunity to create a credit market backed by NVIDIA computing power." Solomon revealed that Jensen Huang personally pitched this financing concept to the Wall Street giants. Blackstone's Gray said AI computing power will be treated as a "financeable asset class," much like mortgage lenders view real estate. He noted that AI demand far exceeds supply, and that Blackstone portfolio companies' use of AI has surged sevenfold this year. BlackRock's Fink described the project as the beginning of "the next future of financial engineering," comparable to the creation of mortgage-backed securities in the 1970s. He said some funds have already been raised, but BlackRock will "continue to raise significantly more." "We need to raise money and get it to work as quickly as possible, because I believe it is critical for the US to be the global leader in AI," Fink emphasized.
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