Nvidia has partnered with some of the world’s largest banks and investment firms to mobilise up to $500 billion in capital for artificial intelligence infrastructure, as demand for computing power continues to surge.
The chipmaker said it had reached agreements with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, with the investors treating AI hardware and infrastructure, commonly known as “compute”, — as a new investable asset class.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer, said the financing would help bring long-term institutional capital into the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market.
“In AI, compute is revenue,” Huang said. “We are bringing the world’s leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure.”
The capital will support infrastructure projects being developed by Nvidia and its partners.
Much of the funding is expected to go towards new data centres designed to house, operate and cool large numbers of high-performance chips used to process AI workloads.
The investment could also support new manufacturing facilities for AI chips, helping expand production capacity and meet growing demand from technology companies.
KKR co-chief executives Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall described computing infrastructure as a critical asset for the modern economy.
“Compute has become a critical infrastructure asset,” they said, adding that the biggest challenge was delivering the infrastructure required to turn growing ambitions into operational capacity.
Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) have become central to the development and operation of many of the world’s leading AI platforms.
Companies using Nvidia chips include Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic.
These technology companies have collectively spent more than $1 trillion on AI projects and infrastructure over the past three years, with spending expected to increase as demand for AI services grows.
The surge in demand for Nvidia’s chips and related services has helped drive a fivefold increase in the company’s stock market value over the past three years.
Huang said Nvidia’s role as a chipmaker represented only the beginning of its involvement in the AI infrastructure revolution.
“Today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” he said.
The involvement of major financial institutions highlights the growing shift in how investors view AI infrastructure.
Apollo, which manages more than $1 trillion in assets, said modern computing had emerged as a scarce and mission-critical asset class capable of supporting long-term economic growth and productivity gains.
Jim Zelter, President of Apollo, said the infrastructure required to power AI was increasingly becoming an important investment opportunity.
The latest deals also reflect growing interest among major asset managers in financing individual AI infrastructure projects.
BlackRock, for instance, recently entered into a separate agreement with Meta to finance and take a majority ownership stake in a data centre in Texas.
The new financing arrangements involving Nvidia and major Wall Street investors could provide additional funding for the construction of the data centres, chip factories and other infrastructure needed to support the next phase of the global AI boom.
