Nvidia's $82B Quarter Fuels AI Infrastructure Financing Push

Nvidia reported revenue of about $82 billion in the three months ended April 26, up 85% from a year earlier. Net income surged 211% to $58 billion. The chipmaker has broadly met the sky-high expectations that followed its 2023 breakout.

Behind those numbers is a strategy that extends far beyond selling semiconductors. Nvidia now also functions as the largest venture investor in the startups that buy its chips and as a financier of the data centers those chips power.

"If AI is a modern-day gold rush, then Nvidia is not only selling the picks; they're also shareholders in the mines themselves, and now they're becoming the bank that's lending to all the prospectors," Rob Lalka, a business professor at Tulane University, told Business Insider in an email. Lalka is the author of "The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits into Power."

The company has invested or committed tens of billions of dollars into OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. It holds equity stakes in scores of other AI startups that rely on its hardware, Lalka said. Nvidia also owns shares in data center operators such as CoreWeave and Nebius Group, which run thousands of its processors.

Nvidia's latest move is a $500 billion financing agreement with some of Wall Street's largest asset managers, including Apollo and KKR, to fund AI infrastructure built around its chips. The structure lets Nvidia collect revenue from hardware sales while also earning returns on the capital that builds the facilities housing its chips.

The web of deals has drawn warnings from prominent investors. Mark Cuban, the billionaire from "Shark Tank," posted on X that Nvidia is playing a role similar to the IPO market during the dot-com boom, "funding everyone and anyone." He added, "One breakthrough in another chip provider, or a misstep, and it all could crumble. It's truly scary."

Michael Burry, the investor who called the subprime mortgage crisis, has also weighed in. In November he wrote that Nvidia, like Cisco during the dot-com era, was "at the center of it all, with the picks and shovels for all and the expansive vision to go with it." More recently Burry posted that Nvidia is "overreaching" as it pushes circular spending to "biblical proportions."

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has acknowledged the company's central role. Describing online memes on the topic in November, he said, "We're basically holding the planet together – and it's not untrue."

The NVDA stock page shows an Alpha Score of 77 out of 100, labeled Strong, with the stock trading at $224.79, up 0.31% on the session. The financing deal involves KKR, which carries a Mixed Alpha Score of 44. Nvidia holds a stake in Nebius Group, which also has a Mixed score of 53.

Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.