NVIDIA has struck strategic agreements with six of Wall Street's largest asset managers — Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR — to launch independent AI compute infrastructure financing platforms designed to mobilize more than $500 billion of third-party capital for data centers, power supply and the rest of the AI buildout.
Compute As An Asset Class
Under the memorandums of understanding, each firm will independently underwrite AI infrastructure at global scale rather than forming a single syndicate. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC he approached only these six firms and "none turned him down," adding that he wants his chips treated as "an investable asset" alongside commercial real estate, toll roads or infrastructure debt.
Why Off-Balance-Sheet Matters
The structure lets outside investors fund the data-center, power and networking buildout without adding directly to NVIDIA's balance sheet. That is critical as hyperscaler capex bumps against $600 billion per year and access to grid power becomes a rate-limiting resource. BlackRock is expected to route deals through its Global Infrastructure Partners platform, Blackstone through QTS and its infrastructure arm, and Brookfield through its infrastructure and renewables assets — each with a distinct capital pool.
Stacked On Existing Deals
The Wall Street commitments layer on top of NVIDIA's existing infrastructure investments this summer, including its Cloverleaf Infrastructure partnership for U.S. AI factory sites, its $6B Poolside licensing deal and its Broadcom-Anthropic financing package.
What The Six Get
For the asset managers, the payoff is a bespoke pipeline of AI-linked infrastructure deals with NVIDIA hardware and reference architecture attached — a very different collateral profile from the crypto-mining rigs that anchored the last data-center boom. Blackstone and Apollo have publicly said they see AI compute as one of the largest infrastructure opportunities of the decade.
The move recasts NVIDIA as much a financial platform as a chip company. It also raises the pressure on rivals like AMD and Broadcom, both of which have announced their own compute-financing arrangements in recent weeks.
Reporting based on coverage from NVIDIA, Apollo, GlobeNewswire, CNBC and Bloomberg.