United States: Nvidia has joined forces with some of Wall Street’s biggest banks and investment firms to mobilise up to $500 billion (£370 billion) in capital for artificial intelligence infrastructure, marking a major step in the expansion of the global AI industry.
The chipmaker announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, with the investors treating AI computing hardware and infrastructure as a new asset class for the first time.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the initiative would bring major long-term capital providers together to independently finance and support AI infrastructure projects.
The funding will be directed towards projects developed by Nvidia as well as infrastructure being built by its partners. This is expected to include new data centres capable of housing, operating and cooling large numbers of advanced AI chips.
The investment will also support new manufacturing facilities for AI chips, helping expand production capacity and improve the availability of hardware required to power increasingly sophisticated AI systems. KKR co-chief executives Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall remarked that, “Compute has become a critical infrastructure asset.”
Nvidia’s GPUs have become central to the development of modern AI services. Major technology companies including Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic rely on Nvidia chips to operate AI platforms, chatbots and other computing-intensive services.
The surge in demand has also helped Nvidia’s market value increase dramatically, with the company’s stock market valuation rising about fivefold over the past three years.
Investment manager Jane Sydenham of Rathbones said Nvidia plays a crucial role in supporting the continued expansion of AI. However, she also raised questions over whether the rapidly increasing investment in AI infrastructure will ultimately generate sufficient returns.
AI infrastructure becomes a new investment opportunity
Nvidia has described the emerging infrastructure as a new class of productive and investable assets, referring to AI-focused facilities as AI factories. Apollo President Jim Zelter said modern computing had become a scarce and critical asset capable of supporting long-term economic growth and productivity gains.
The move comes as technology companies continue to commit enormous amounts of money to AI infrastructure. According to Goldman Sachs, major companies using Nvidia technology have collectively spent more than $1 trillion over the past three years on AI projects and infrastructure, with spending expected to increase further.
Other major investment deals are also emerging across the sector. BlackRock recently reached an agreement with Meta to finance and take a majority ownership stake in a data centre in Texas. Meanwhile, Anthropic has partnered with Macquarie Asset Management and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC to secure investment for its own AI infrastructure expansion.
Anthropic has said additional financing is required as demand for its Claude chatbot continues to grow, creating a need for significantly more computing capacity.
The latest Nvidia-backed initiative reflects the growing role of institutional capital in building the physical infrastructure required for the global AI boom, from advanced chips and factories to massive data centres capable of supporting next-generation AI systems.
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