Nvidia is backing up to $105 billion of financing for an OpenAI data center in Ohio. Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank put in $110 billion in OpenAI's February round. Microsoft and Nvidia committed up to $15 billion to Anthropic, and Micron invested in Anthropic's round alongside a supply deal.
Suppliers financing their customers can accelerate adoption, but it also makes demand look larger than it would be if customers had to raise capital independently. Nvidia's Jensen Huang addressed the "circular" criticism by saying Nvidia invests only after a company has real customer revenue contracts.
We think the useful test is whether end-customer revenue eventually covers the capital deployed. As Axios put it, the buildout is entering the show-me-the-money phase.
Source: CNBC