Nvidia has partnered with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR on a USD 500 billion AI infrastructure financing deal.
A group of major financial firms is working with Nvidia to assemble the funding package for AI infrastructure development, according to people familiar with the discussions. The arrangement could be announced as soon as the following Monday and would represent one of the more extensive financing efforts undertaken for the AI sector to date.
According to Financial Times, the consortium reportedly includes Apollo Global, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR. Following reports of the talks, Nvidia's shares fell by around 1.4%, reducing the company's market capitalisation by more than USD 70 billion. Nvidia's market capitalisation stood at approximately USD 5.25 trillion at the time of the report, having increased 15-fold since the end of 2022, shortly after the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Nvidia's expanding financing role
The deal illustrates Nvidia's continued involvement in raising capital both for itself and for its clients as they build out chips, power supply, and data centres to support AI development. Nvidia's graphics processing units underpin most of the leading AI models currently available in the US. The company has previously provided financial backing to help its AI partners raise debt, a practice that has raised concerns among market observers about concentrated risk within the sector, given the circular nature of some of these transactions.
Separately, Nvidia has been in talks to provide a guarantee for a 10-gigawatt data centre project in Ohio, US, that is leased to OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Capital demand across the AI ecosystem
The talks also reflect Nvidia's deepening relationships with private capital firms, which are preparing to direct large volumes of insurance, retail, and institutional investor assets into AI infrastructure. Firms such as Apollo and Blackstone have previously structured financing arrangements to support AI companies, including Anthropic, in covering their spending on chips and data centres.
Demand for computing capacity has continued to outpace supply, with major cloud providers, including Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, increasing AI infrastructure spending. Morgan Stanley has projected that hyperscalers will spend USD 3.5 trillion between 2026 and 2028. This has pushed technology companies to draw on multiple sources of financing, including public equity, investment-grade and high-yield bonds, securitised debt, private credit, and project finance markets.
Jim Zelter, president of Apollo, said on an earnings call earlier this month that the scale of the AI infrastructure build-out is unprecedented, noting that more than USD 8 trillion in capital is expected to be invested overall, with private capital seen as covering a portion of that alongside public funding.
