By Alex Sirois
Publication Date: 2026-10-19 11:15:00
CoreWeave’s stumble has put a spotlight on how Nvidia and AMD are bankrolling the AI chip boom, and the two approaches carry very different kinds of danger lurking beneath blockbuster revenue numbers.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) both posted record AI quarters this summer. Those reports deserve a second read now that CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) has dropped and leveraged chip financing faces fresh scrutiny. NVIDIA puts its own balance sheet behind customers. AMD signs gigawatt deals with no disclosed financing support.
NVIDIA Turns Financier as AMD Signs Anchor Tenants
NVIDIA’s revenue reached $96.22 billion, up 105.8% YoY, a scale that lets it finance demand. Supply commitments hit $279.00 billion, mostly memory for Vera Rubin, and partner guarantees are limited at $108.5 billion. A new take-or-pay structure serves as a minimum revenue guarantee for lenders on neocloud projects. Jensen Huang addressed the obvious objection: “We know some will call this circular financing. We see it differently.”
AMD’s model is simpler. Revenue rose 50.1% to $11.54 billion, driven by Data Center sales of $6.72B, up 107%. Anthropic will deploy up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 Series GPUs in Helios racks, alongside OpenAI and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META). Lisa Su said “customer pull for Helios is very strong and tracking ahead of our initial forecasts.”
| Lens | NVIDIA | AMD |
|---|---|---|
| Capital Lever | Over $500 billion in third-party capital via major asset… |