SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Nvidia has teamed up with some of the world’s largest banks and investment firms to mobilise up to $500 billion (£370 billion) in capital for artificial intelligence infrastructure, in a move that underscores the growing importance of computing capacity to the global AI race.
The chipmaker said it had reached agreements with major investors including Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, which are treating AI computing infrastructure as a new investable asset class.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the initiative would bring major long-term investors together to finance infrastructure needed to support the rapid expansion of AI.
“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 financing will support projects developed by Nvidia as well as infrastructure being built by its partners.
Data centres and chip manufacturing
The projects backed by the initiative are expected to include new data centres capable of housing, operating and cooling large quantities of advanced computer chips used to process AI workloads.
Funding could also support new manufacturing facilities for AI chips, helping expand the supply of processors required by technology companies developing increasingly sophisticated AI systems.
KKR co-chief executives Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall described computing infrastructure as an increasingly important component of the global economy.
“Compute has become a critical infrastructure asset,” they said, adding that delivering the infrastructure at scale remained one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) are widely used to power AI platforms, cloud services and chatbots developed by some of the world’s biggest technology companies.
Among companies using Nvidia chips are Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic.
AI spending drives demand for Nvidia
The surge in demand for computing power has fuelled unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure.
Major technology and AI companies have collectively spent more than $1 trillion over the past three years on AI-related projects and infrastructure, with spending expected to rise further as companies race to develop increasingly capable models and applications.
That demand has also helped drive Nvidia’s market value sharply higher, with the company’s stock market valuation increasing roughly fivefold over three years.
Huang said Nvidia’s evolution from a chipmaker into an infrastructure provider reflected the changing economics of artificial intelligence.
“Today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” he said.
Wall Street embraces AI infrastructure
The Nvidia-backed financing initiative comes as financial institutions increasingly view AI infrastructure as a long-term investment opportunity rather than simply a technology-sector expense.
Apollo President Jim Zelter described modern computing capacity as a scarce and strategically important asset capable of supporting long-term economic growth and productivity gains.
BlackRock, meanwhile, recently reached a separate agreement with Meta to finance and acquire a majority ownership stake in a data centre in Texas.
Other AI companies are also seeking large-scale infrastructure financing. Anthropic recently announced an agreement with Macquarie Asset Management and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC to support its AI infrastructure needs.
Anthropic did not disclose the value of that transaction but said additional computing capacity was necessary as demand for its Claude chatbot continued to grow.
