Nvidia is using its balance sheet to help more companies afford its expensive AI chips — and taking a cut of the resulting business in return.
According to The Information, whose report was written by Phoebe Liu, Nvidia has launched a new program in which it promises to financially backstop young cloud providers that rent out its AI chips, in exchange for a share of their cloud revenues. The Information names Firmus as one such young cloud provider covered by the arrangement.
Seeking Alpha reports that Nvidia has struck revenue-sharing deals with Sharon AI and other cloud partners to help scale what the industry calls "AI factories." TradingView describes the setup as a combined revenue-sharing and credit-support model, while Investing.com frames it as revenue-sharing agreements aimed at AI startups. Moomoo notes that Nvidia is about to start taking a share of cloud providers' revenue.
GuruFocus characterizes the move as Nvidia leveraging its balance sheet to support AI chip purchases, and The Tech Buzz reports that Nvidia is opening its AI infrastructure to capital partners. Forbes casts the strategy more broadly as Nvidia bankrolling its own AI gold rush.
In essence, the reporting describes Nvidia shifting from simply selling chips to underwriting the customers who buy them. By backstopping smaller cloud companies — reducing the risk they take on when purchasing costly hardware — Nvidia can widen the pool of buyers able to afford its products, while the revenue share gives it an ongoing stake in how those chips are used.
Separately, reporting from eciks.org notes that Palantir shares surged on a Nvidia sovereign AI partnership tied to the U.S. government, a sign of how far Nvidia's dealmaking now reaches.
Why it matters: If Nvidia is financing and profiting from the very companies that buy its chips, it deepens its grip on the AI economy — and ties its fortunes even more tightly to a boom it is helping to fund.