Nvidia invested $2b into CoreWeave for 9% equity stake. CoreWeave is spending $35b in CapEx in 2026. Therefore, Nvidia's investment is only 5.7% of CoreWeave's single year CapEx. The other $32b is coming from other sources that isn't Nvidia. This is hardly circular.
Nvidia invests in Neoclouds because it's a hedge against hyperscalers having too much power, ie designing and prioritizing their own chips, and not fully using Nvidia's rack design. Neoclouds give hyperscalers competition. Neoclouds accept Nvidia investments because it allows them to secure Nvidia chips first, which is a competitive advantage since new Nvidia chips have been as much as ~5-20x more efficient than old Nvidia chips.
Nvidia was planning to directly compete against hyperscalers through DGX Cloud. They cancelled public DGX Cloud access when they found that investing in Neoclouds would accomplish the same goals without having to compete against their biggest customers.
If you're Nvidia, it's smart because Neoclouds that you have a large stake in will deploy your full stack from GPUs to networking to storage racks. They will share valuable usage data back to you so you can design a better next generation. Hyperscalers are likely a lot less cooperative, prefer to use their own designs if possible, and will guard their usage data.
My understanding is that it's not about the money itself but the model:
- you fund a new company and sign long terms contracts with it
- this new company uses the money you gave it and a lot of debt (backed by long term contracts) to build datacenters and buy a lot of GPU
- your figures look great
What happens when they run out of debt or funds? If they reach some kind of profitability it's not a big deal, but if not ...
EDIT
Forget to mention the buyback of unused capacity problem: what happens to your figures when you have to buy back tons of unused GPUs?
Yes, circular financing is not by itself a problem.
It being that size, lasting for that long, and the total lack of viable products created by it are the problem. Financing only adds leverage, that makes every loss or profit larger.
You're probably just responding to the headline but this person is an AI bull and isn't claiming it's a big deal, she's going into it and explaining it.
People are looking for the AI bear case - so this headline gotta work better. Its not a bad idea haha. More people suspect there is some circular shenanigans but want confirmation -- so maybe this is the best way to lure them in. Come as the bear, stay for the bull.
With just these 2 comments, now I'm really gonna read that article.
> Why is it a big deal? Nvidia invested $2b into CoreWeave for 9% equity stake.
Depends if they actually got the $2b in real money. There's a difference.
It's a big deal if no money was involved. Nothing even entered the company directly. Some deals have structured with Special Purpose Vehicles where money goes to the SPV. The SPV buys GPUs with it (from Nvidia). GPUs is loaned back to the company involved. So this company is stuck with this GPU rental, which may or may not be what they want and not $2b.
This sounds like a bad deal? So Nvidia had to sweeten the deal and promise min utilization on those GPUs by renting it themselves even if they don't need it.
Circular financing is a dead horse - dont beat it. Instead, what is more interesting could be: Is there a path to these builds becoming economically profitable ? Towards this, some metrics to watch are: 1) ROI per token per dollar 2) Enterprise token budgets. And at what point there is an overbuild relative to the token roi. Alternatively, pressure on token costs due to the open weights models etc.
These questions can't really be answered now because things are moving too fast. That may explain why people are latching on to things they can prove like circular financing even if those arguments are pretty weak.
boomers will "invest" at a loss in anything that has the AI tag, this is a non issue. the whole ecosystem can bled cash for another couple years while the usual suspects blabber on about the singularity to korean pension funds
I predict a 2030 end date for the bubble, as that is when many globalist think tanks declare they will invade Russia to take their resources, and it's unlikely even China can ignore that, and here comes World War III.
In case you didn't notice, nobody has invaded Russia since Hitler. Instead it has been Russia invading other countries, using whatever imaginary threat as an excuse.
You may be right about WW3 in 2030, but based on the track record it's more likely that Russia will be the invader.
Yeah, it's basically creating the illusion of demand and revenue. Lots of fraud in the past relied on companies "investing" into companies which then bought from the investor. I'm not sure to what degree this is happening now, though, and to what degree this is benign.
People are investing because if Nvidia are essentially buying shares with graphics cards then they're motivated to make this stuff work. If the invested in company's share price tanks, Nvidia loses out, and I imagine quite a few people are willing to win or lose alongside Nvidia.
Nvidia invested $2b into CoreWeave for 9% equity stake. CoreWeave is spending $35b in CapEx in 2026. Therefore, Nvidia's investment is only 5.7% of CoreWeave's single year CapEx. The other $32b is coming from other sources that isn't Nvidia. This is hardly circular.
Nvidia invests in Neoclouds because it's a hedge against hyperscalers having too much power, ie designing and prioritizing their own chips, and not fully using Nvidia's rack design. Neoclouds give hyperscalers competition. Neoclouds accept Nvidia investments because it allows them to secure Nvidia chips first, which is a competitive advantage since new Nvidia chips have been as much as ~5-20x more efficient than old Nvidia chips.
Nvidia was planning to directly compete against hyperscalers through DGX Cloud. They cancelled public DGX Cloud access when they found that investing in Neoclouds would accomplish the same goals without having to compete against their biggest customers.
If you're Nvidia, it's smart because Neoclouds that you have a large stake in will deploy your full stack from GPUs to networking to storage racks. They will share valuable usage data back to you so you can design a better next generation. Hyperscalers are likely a lot less cooperative, prefer to use their own designs if possible, and will guard their usage data.
- you fund a new company and sign long terms contracts with it - this new company uses the money you gave it and a lot of debt (backed by long term contracts) to build datacenters and buy a lot of GPU - your figures look great
What happens when they run out of debt or funds? If they reach some kind of profitability it's not a big deal, but if not ...
EDIT
Forget to mention the buyback of unused capacity problem: what happens to your figures when you have to buy back tons of unused GPUs?
It being that size, lasting for that long, and the total lack of viable products created by it are the problem. Financing only adds leverage, that makes every loss or profit larger.
What is the end of this sentence?
With just these 2 comments, now I'm really gonna read that article.
https://isaiprofitable.com/
The only profitable company is the one running the scam.
Depends if they actually got the $2b in real money. There's a difference.
It's a big deal if no money was involved. Nothing even entered the company directly. Some deals have structured with Special Purpose Vehicles where money goes to the SPV. The SPV buys GPUs with it (from Nvidia). GPUs is loaned back to the company involved. So this company is stuck with this GPU rental, which may or may not be what they want and not $2b.
This sounds like a bad deal? So Nvidia had to sweeten the deal and promise min utilization on those GPUs by renting it themselves even if they don't need it.
So what's income and what's expense here?
That's the problem. It's inflated and messed up.
It is. The GPUs go on to be used to get loans to then get more GPUs.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
You may be right about WW3 in 2030, but based on the track record it's more likely that Russia will be the invader.
Financing is circular because creating a liability for one party (debt) creates an asset for another (the bank) off of which more debt can be secured
A bank / financier sells trust and reassurance. They otherwise invent most money from thin air.
It may be fine, or not. It it has been a frequent type of manipulation to obfuscate the real accounting situation.