A quarter of Nvidia’s business next year comes from labs it is financing

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Nvidia CFO Colette Kress disclosed on the company's August 26 earnings call that roughly one quarter of Nvidia's business next year will come from AI labs it directly finances — making explicit a circular structure previously discussed only at the edges of Wall Street analysis. The mechanism: Nvidia invests in an AI lab; the lab uses that capital to build data centers stocked with Nvidia chips; Nvidia books the chip sales as revenue. Kress said Nvidia has nearly $50 billion invested across these labs and has partnered with six investment firms — Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR — to raise a further $500 billion in external capital. The $500B figure is commitments, not signed contracts; Nvidia described all partnerships as 'subject to definitive agreements.' Concrete commitments disclosed: SB Energy is building 4.25 gigawatts of compute capacity exclusively for Nvidia hardware, with OpenAI as first tenant. OpenAI's total committed compute stands at around 12 gigawatts through 2030. An unnamed second lab has credit support for nearly 2 gigawatts. Nvidia also guarantees rental income for smaller cloud operators in exchange for a revenue share above that floor — earning twice per deal. Kress raised the phrase 'circular financing' before any analyst did, then offered three defenses: outside lenders independently assess each deal, chip buyers are investment-grade, and Nvidia is not making direct loans. The disclosure puts the structural question squarely on the record.