By Julie Bort
Publication Date: 2026-08-13 15:08:00
Nvidia announced this week that Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR were willing to commit up to $500 billion to build AI data centers. That eye-popping figure got a lot of the attention, but the bigger story is Nvidia’s effort to create a secondary market for aging GPUs.
To convince those big-name financial companies, Nvidia has agreed to guarantee, with its own money, that its chips used as collateral in these deals will retain their value.
Many have now commented on how unusual, smart, and dangerous this plan is. It is all of those things. The bond markets got so spooked that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to X and business TV to better explain how Nvidia’s risk would be limited.
But underneath the financial maneuvering to fund AI data centers (and keep revenue for Nvidia flowing), is something, perhaps, far more interesting for startups and enterprises: Huang wants to ensure an ecosystem of used AI hardware flourishes, helping sustain demand for Nvidia hardware as it ages.
Specifically, Nvidia is promising that if GPUs used as collateral don’t retain their value as expected, the company will cover up to 25% of the difference. So, if a data center owner defaults on a loan and the lender must liquidate, but the chips can’t command the price the books say they should, Nvidia will chip in.
The dangerous part for Nvidia is that this creates something financiers call “wrong way” risk. That is, Nvidia’s obligations will…
