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A CNBC Morning Call Sheet roundtable on Tuesday, August 11, highlighted a shift that’s been building all year. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) is now helping to underwrite the AI buildout itself, standing alongside KKR, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock as a co-financier of the data centers that will consume its own chips.
Defiance ETFs’ Sylvia Jablonski framed the pivot bluntly: “Nvidia is now the Wall Street ecosystem financier. So what they’re doing is they’re pretty much bringing balance sheet, Wall Street balance sheet, to AI companies and to hyperscalers that want to spend but don’t want to use their own balance sheet.” Her follow-on captured the big concern right now among investors: “It feels a little bit circular, right, where they’re not only the provider of the actual chips themselves, but also now the financing for this build out.“
NVIDIA’s 25% Backstop and Why It Matters
Options Play’s Tony Zhang zeroed in on the deal architecture: “After this news came out yesterday, Nvidia is only backstopping 25% of this particular deal. And I think it’s interesting that it’s moving on to Wall Street balance sheets as opposed to keeping them on the hyperscalers or Nvidia’s.” NVIDIA keeps skin in the game, but the bulk of the credit exposure rides with alternative-asset managers and banks that arrange the financing.
NVIDIA signed memorandums of understanding with Blackstone, BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to create financing platforms for its customers.
The financial firepower is substantial. KKR & Co. (NYSE:KKR) closed Q2 2026 with $796.49 billion in AUM and $143 billion in uncalled commitments. BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) reported record $15.34 trillion in AUM and added roughly $230 million in private-credit fees through its HPS platform. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) posted Q2 investment banking fees of $3.40 billion, up 55% year over year on leveraged finance and IPO activity tied to AI buildout.
The Chinese Price War Wildcard
Peter Boockvar of One Point BFG Wealth Partners tied the financing structure to a demand-side threat: “The companies that are going to be leasing these facilities like OpenAI and Anthropic, they’re now in a price war. When you look at the price of the models that are being sold, the Chinese are creating a war. And this is project finance.”
He thinks this could be dangerous for the builders of AI: “These companies that are going to be providing the computing power are no longer price makers. They are price takers because of the Chinese. So this is one big bet. We all hope it’s going to work out. I think it’s going to work out for the users of the technology, but I’m questioning whether it’s going to work out for the builders of the infrastructure.“
What to Watch Next
NVIDIA’s Q2 FY2027 earnings report on August 26 will provide the next major test. The company expects $91.0 billion in revenue and a 75.0% non-GAAP gross margin, excluding China Data Center compute sales. Polymarket currently gives NVIDIA a 96.1% chance of exceeding $80 billion in Data Center revenue, but just an 18.5% chance of topping $90 billion.
CoreWeave’s Q2 results will offer another important signal by showing whether its massive backlog is converting into deployed computing capacity on schedule. Together, these reports should help investors determine whether AI demand is growing quickly enough to justify the enormous infrastructure investments now being financed by NVIDIA and Wall Street.
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