$3 billion
How much Nvidia said today that it will invest in Meta's mega-stock sale, which is intended to fund its massive spending in AI infrastructure. It also said Meta will increase its deployment of Nvidia infrastructure as part of their expanded partnership.
It's the latest example of how Nvidia has become a banker to the AI boom, often through arrangements in which it invests in the companies that buy its chips or uses its balance sheet to guarantee financing for them.
-- Earlier this year, the world's most valuable company provided a $105 billion backstop for an OpenAI data-center lease in Ohio. Nvidia was initially planning to provide a $250 billion guarantee, but downsized its commitment to address investor concerns, the Journal reported at the time.
-- It also signed deals with two cloud-computing upstarts in Australia where it acts as the customer of last resort.
-- Last year, Nvidia agreed to buy unsold cloud-computing capacity from CoreWeave.
Analysts and investors worry that such financial arrangements could introduce risks and eventually backfire. They cite parallels to the dot-com bubble, when telecom-equipment leaders extended financing to newer, smaller operators in exchange for purchase of their products, creating a self-funded boom.
Nvidia executives have pushed back on "circular financing" criticisms. "I put in one, and a hundred comes back. Is that circular?" CEO Jensen Huang said last month. On the day of the OpenAI deal announcement, Huang addressed the question in a long X post. "Is this circular financing?" he wrote. "No. OpenAI will pay the lease."
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