Nvidia joins forces with Apollo, Blackstone and KKR on $500bn AI financing push

Nvidia has teamed up with some of the world’s largest alternative asset managers and investment banks to create financing platforms that could channel more than $500bn of external capital into AI infrastructure over the coming years, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR are among the firms involved in the initiative, which is designed to provide Nvidia customers with access to financing for the computing capacity required to expand AI operations.

The platforms are expected to assemble pools of capital that can be offered to customers at what the participants described as attractive financing rates, helping companies fund data centres and other infrastructure needed to support AI workloads.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said the initiative would help customers secure computing capacity at scale and accelerate the development of AI infrastructure globally.

The agreement represents another major expansion of the role being played by private capital in funding the AI boom. Alternative asset managers have increasingly moved beyond traditional investments in data centres to provide bespoke financing structures for companies seeking to build large-scale computing capacity.

Apollo and Blackstone earlier this year reached a similar arrangement with chipmaker Broadcom, establishing a financing platform intended to help customers fund purchases of computing infrastructure, including processors developed by Broadcom and Google’s in-house AI chips.

The Nvidia initiative comes as technology companies commit unprecedented sums to data centres, power infrastructure and advanced computing equipment. Investment firms and banks have responded by developing increasingly complex financing structures to meet the capital requirements of the sector.

Nvidia has also been in discussions with OpenAI over a potential financing backstop of around $250bn for a data centre project, while BlackRock has partnered with Meta Platforms on an off-balance-sheet financing structure for a new Texas data centre.