- Nvidia has shifted from chipmaker to AI financier, providing equity, backstops and lease guarantees for OpenAI, neoclouds and data center projects.
- Nvidia had $36 billion in off-balance-sheet AI cloud agreements and backstops for neoclouds as of its July quarterly filing, plus a guarantee of up to $105 billion for a proposed 10 gigawatt OpenAI data center in Ohio.
- Neocloud shares CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN are down at least 30% this month, and CoreWeave's credit default swap spread has soared past 11%.
- Nvidia stock is off 7.6% in October and on pace for its worst month since November of last year.
- Firmus withdrew its IPO plans this month, and Nscale and SB Energy have not updated their plans to go public in the U.S. in weeks.
- Jensen Huang said demand for neoclouds is off the charts and that a scarcity of working capital is the constraint on AI growth.
Quotes
“If the demand for compute doesn't meet these really super lofty expectations, we're going to have a problem,”
“What is missing in the middle is the working capital to fuel that growth,”