Six financial giants, more than $500 billion, and a question nobody has answered: if a GPU loses most of its value in five years, who absorbs that loss?
Published on August 15, 2026 · by Alex · Nvidia · Artificial intelligence · Semiconductors
Nvidia announced agreements with six financial giants — Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR — to mobilize more than $500 billion to finance purchases of its own chips.
The logic of the move is straightforward: Nvidia sells more chips, customers get the money elsewhere to buy them, and much of the financial risk stays off Nvidia's balance sheet. What is not settled is what happens when those chips stop being the fastest on the market.
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Counterparties | Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR |
| Amount | More than $500 billion |
| Purpose | Finance customer purchases of Nvidia chips |
| Status | Memorandums of understanding, not financing already executed |
That last point is the one most often lost in the headlines, and it is worth underlining: a memorandum of understanding is not debt taken on. It is a statement of intent about how much capital these firms would be willing to mobilize. The real figure will depend on how many of those deals actually get signed.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, has argued that GPUs can become a new asset class, comparable to real estate or infrastructure. In other words: something you can lend against, because it holds its value and generates income predictably.
Given how important they are to technology today, the idea is not far-fetched. The problem shows up when you follow the analogy all the way through.
A highway can generate income for decades. A GPU can be technologically obsolete in four or five years.
That is the whole difference. Physical infrastructure depreciates slowly and predictably. A chip depreciates when the next chip arrives, and nobody controls that.
This structure — the manufacturer helping finance its own customers to drive its sales — is not new. Companies like Lucent and Nortel did exactly the same thing with telecom equipment in the late nineties.
For a while, the system seemed to work perfectly. Sales were growing, customers were buying, and everyone in the chain seemed to be winning at the same time.
Until the cycle turned.
It is worth being clear about what this parallel does and does not mean. It does not imply that the same thing will happen to Nvidia: it is a different company, with different margins and a different market position. What the precedent contributes is the right question: this kind of structure has been tried before, and what determined the outcome was not the growth phase but the contraction.
If a GPU financed today loses much of its value in five years, who absorbs that loss?
That answer does not exist yet, and it is exactly the thing to watch. While the chips are new and demand is maxed out, the question does not come due. It comes due when they stop being new.
None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell. It is a description of a financial structure and of the questions it leaves open. See the legal notice.
Nvidia signed memorandums of understanding with six financial giants — Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR — to mobilize more than $500 billion to finance purchases of its own chips. These are statements of intent, not debt already taken on: the real figure depends on how many deals actually get signed.
Because the collateral can lose value before the loan is repaid. A highway or a building depreciates slowly and predictably; a GPU can be technologically obsolete in four or five years, whenever the next chip arrives, and nobody controls that timing. If the asset falls faster than the debt, someone has to absorb the difference.
Both financed their own customers to sell telecom equipment. While the cycle held, sales grew and every link in the chain seemed to win at once. When the cycle turned, customers could not pay and the loss came back to the manufacturer. It does not mean Nvidia will follow the same path; it points at what to watch.
This article is the written version of the Saturday analysis.
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