Nvidia taps Wall Street for AI infrastructure push

Nvidia is joining forces with six of the world’s biggest investment groups to mobilise more than $500 billion for artificial intelligence infrastructure, creating financing platforms designed to expand access to the computing capacity underpinning the global AI boom.

The chipmaker has signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The firms plan to establish independent platforms that will provide dedicated pools of third-party capital for Nvidia customers seeking to build large-scale AI computing facilities. Final agreements have yet to be executed.

The initiative represents a significant shift in the financing of AI infrastructure. Rather than requiring technology companies, cloud providers and start-ups to fund costly clusters of graphics processors largely through their own balance sheets, the proposed structure would give institutional investors a direct route into projects backed by computing equipment and usage-linked revenues.

Nvidia is positioning its computing systems as a new type of investable infrastructure, comparable in some respects with assets financed through long-term infrastructure and private-credit markets. The model is intended to channel capital into what chief executive Jensen Huang calls “AI factories” — specialised data centres built around accelerated computing systems used to train and operate artificial intelligence models.

Under the planned partnerships, financing could be offered to frontier AI laboratories, enterprises, specialised AI cloud providers and other customers within Nvidia’s ecosystem. The structure could help organisations acquire costly computing systems without absorbing the entire upfront investment while giving lenders and infrastructure investors exposure to long-duration demand for computing capacity.

The involvement of Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR also illustrates how rapidly private capital has moved into data centres, electricity generation, digital infrastructure and technology-related credit. Goldman Sachs is expected to contribute investment and distribution capabilities as financial institutions develop markets around debt supported by AI computing assets.

Capital requirements have become one of the biggest constraints on the next stage of AI expansion. Training and running advanced models requires increasingly dense clusters of processors, high-speed networking, cooling systems and enormous quantities of electricity. New data centres can therefore require investments stretching into billions of dollars before generating meaningful operating income.

Nvidia’s own growth shows the scale of demand. The company generated record revenue of $81.6 billion in the quarter ended April 26, 2026, an increase of 85% from a year earlier. Data-centre revenue reached $75.2 billion, rising 92%, as spending on accelerated computing continued to dominate its business.

The financing initiative could also broaden Nvidia’s role beyond supplying chips and software. Its commercial position has increasingly depended on the ability of customers to secure enough capital, electricity and data-centre capacity to deploy successive generations of its systems. Helping establish financing channels could reduce one of those bottlenecks while reinforcing demand across Nvidia’s hardware, networking and CUDA software ecosystem.

The arrangement nevertheless exposes investors to risks that differ from conventional infrastructure assets. AI processors can become technologically outdated much faster than power plants, pipelines or traditional data centres. Returns will depend on utilisation rates, equipment life, electricity costs, financing terms and the willingness of customers to continue paying for large amounts of computing capacity.

The rapid pace of semiconductor development makes those assumptions particularly important. New generations of processors can offer substantial gains in performance and efficiency, potentially reducing the economic value of older equipment. Research into Nvidia data-centre processors has found that computing performance has historically improved considerably faster than several other hardware characteristics, illustrating the speed at which the underlying technology continues to change.

The financing model therefore relies partly on the proposition that Nvidia systems can remain economically productive across different customers and workloads. The company argues that its software ecosystem, broad adoption and ability to move computing resources between users can extend their useful economic life.

Wall Street’s participation also reflects a wider attempt to turn computing capacity into a recognised financial asset. Academic work published this year has begun examining the pricing of AI compute as a capital asset and the possibility of financial instruments tied to future computing capacity, highlighting how the market is evolving beyond conventional technology investment.