Nvidia’s $600 Billion Pledge to OpenAI Sparks Debate Over Chipmaker’s New Role as Lender
Published on 07/28/2026 at 05:21 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Nvidia shares tumbled more than 5 percent on Monday, closing at €172.88 in their steepest single-session decline in months, as news emerged that the chip giant is weighing a financial guarantee of up to $250 billion for a colossal OpenAI data center project in Ohio. The sell-off, which brought the stock 14.63 percent below its 52-week high from mid-May, reflected mounting anxiety over the company’s deepening entanglement in customer financing.
At the heart of the controversy sits a planned 10-gigawatt data center in Pike County, Ohio, to be built on the site of a former uranium enrichment facility in Piketon. SB Energy and SoftBank are developing the site in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, with total project costs expected to exceed $500 billion. Nvidia’s potential guarantee would cover only leasing and construction financing — not the chips themselves. Separately, the company is negotiating up to $350 billion in financing for the purchase of its own graphics processors, bringing its total potential credit exposure to roughly $600 billion. The first 800-megawatt phase is slated to come online in 2028, with power supplied in part by a $33 billion U.S.-Japan agreement for a gas-fired plant.
The move marks a dramatic shift for a company that has traditionally been a supplier, not a financier. Nvidia already invested $30 billion in an OpenAI funding round in March, and CEO Jensen Huang has described the infrastructure buildout as “the greatest infrastructure expansion in human history,” pushing back against criticism that the financing structure is circular. Yet the arrangement has drawn sharp scrutiny from credit markets: five-year credit default swaps on Nvidia bonds posted their biggest single-day jump since November, climbing from roughly 42 to 57.25 basis points. At the same time, Nvidia is preparing its first bond issuance in five years, seeking $20 billion to $25 billion against reported demand of $85 billion.
Investor Michael Burry, famous for his bets against overheated markets, weighed in with a terse “around and around we go,” questioning the sustainability of the financing chain. Jim Cramer drew parallels to the dot-com bubble, warning that suppliers should not be financing their own customers. Critics also note that OpenAI remains unprofitable and lacks an investment-grade credit rating — the company is projected to lose $14 billion in 2026 alone and accumulate $115 billion in cumulative losses by 2029. Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s share of global web traffic has shrunk from 86.7 percent in January 2025 to 64.5 percent in January 2026, raising questions about whether end-user demand is keeping pace with financed infrastructure.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?
Analyst opinions remain divided but tilt bullish. BofA’s Vivek Arya reaffirmed a buy rating with a $350 price target, pointing to industry-wide infrastructure spending that should exceed $700 billion by 2026. Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon struck a more cautious tone, emphasizing the risks embedded in the complex financing structure. The broader analyst consensus still leans toward a buy, with price targets ranging from roughly $300 to $324. In dollar terms, BofA’s target of $350 translates to about €266.21, implying roughly 54 percent upside from current levels.
The sell-off was initially Nvidia-specific: major U.S. indexes rose on Monday, while other AI-adjacent names like AMD, Intel, and Dell also slipped. Insider sales of roughly $410.6 million over the past three months added to the bearish sentiment. Technically, the stock now sits 4.20 percent below its 50-day moving average, with a relative strength index of 43.3 pointing to neutral-to-weak momentum. The 200-day moving average of €166.18 provides a key support level, with the stock currently trading about 4 percent above it.
The OpenAI talks are just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Nvidia is currently negotiating engagements worth more than $750 billion in total, including a $500 billion deal with South Korea’s SK Group for data centers exceeding two gigawatts of capacity, and a billion-dollar investment in Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence. A separate $1 billion investment for a 4.5 percent stake in South Korean conglomerate Naver underscores the strategy of using balance-sheet commitments to secure long-term hardware demand.
Nvidia at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
All eyes now turn to Nvidia’s quarterly earnings, expected August 26, where the consensus calls for earnings per share of $2.07 on revenue of $91.7 billion. But for many investors, the debate over the viability of these billion-dollar financing structures may shape the stock’s trajectory as much as the operating results themselves. The next concrete test: whether the $250 billion guarantee talks with OpenAI are confirmed or collapse — a decision that will determine whether Nvidia officially enters the world of large-scale credit provision.
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