[New York = E-Daily Seong Joowon Correspondent] NVIDIA is transforming from a semiconductor company into a financial platform. On the 10th (local time), NVIDIA signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with six major Wall Street financial firms—including Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR—to create a $500 billion (approximately 706.5 trillion won) artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure financing platform. The structure involves securing loans using graphics processing units (GPUs) and data centers as collateral, and the market has already dubbed it “Bank of NVIDIA.” Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, described the deal as creating a “new asset class” targeting the $22 trillion private capital market.

The key to this deal is the “transfer of risk.” According to the Financial Times (FT), NVIDIA has structured the deal so that it assumes at least 25% of the risk of a decline in GPU value. Vivek Arya, an analyst at Bank of America (BofA), pointed out that this deal shifts the burden to the consortium, leaving NVIDIA’s balance sheet unscathed.
However, warning signs are also growing. NVIDIA’s 5-year credit default swap (CDS) premium has surged by nearly 90% since the start of the year, approaching an all-time high (approximately 80 basis points). Michael Burry, the professional investor who inspired the movie *The Big Short*, wrote on X that NVIDIA’s reckless expansion is driving recurring expenses to “biblical (astronomical)” levels, while American billionaire investor Mark Cuban compared the current structure to the IPO boom during the dot-com bubble, warning that it “could bring the market down.” The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned of inadequate disclosure of transaction terms and the risk of collateral overlap, while off-balance-sheet payment obligations in the AI industry total nearly $2 trillion, according to combined estimates from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
This influx of capital is driving up demand for GPUs and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), with ripple effects extending to SamsungElectronics(005930) andSK hynix(000660). Son Seong-won, a professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Business, noted in an interview with Edaily on the 12th that “diversification of financing is, in itself, a healthy phenomenon.” However, he pointed out that if the answer to the question, “Would customers have made those purchases even without financial support or guarantees from NVIDIA or Google?” is “no,” then this serves as a “yellow warning light” signaling that the circular financing structure should be scrutinized. He emphasized that this structure is sound only when customers have independent cash flows, lenders bear the actual risk, transactions are conducted under market conditions, and guarantees and related-party exposures are transparently disclosed.