Nvidia’s Growth Story Gets a Reality Check as Moody’s Flags $1.2 Trillion in Lease Debt
Published on 07/26/2026 at 06:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The tension between Nvidia’s blockbuster dealmaking and the mounting financial strain on its biggest customers has never been more apparent. Over the past week, the chipmaker cemented partnerships worth nearly $1 trillion across Asia while a major credit rating agency warned that the very infrastructure boom fueling Nvidia’s order book is built on an increasingly precarious debt pile.
A $950 Billion Korean Pledge and a Japanese Robotics Push
The most eye-catching development came from San Francisco, where South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hosted an AI summit that produced a sweeping set of agreements with Nvidia totaling $950 billion. The centerpiece is a $500 billion-plus alliance with the SK Group: SK Telecom will build a 2-gigawatt AI factory powered by Nvidia’s forthcoming Vera-Rubin platform and SK Hynix’s HBM4 memory chips, with the first facility slated to begin operations in 2027. SK Hynix and Nvidia also formalized a long-term pact to co-develop the next generation of high-bandwidth memory.
Samsung Electronics signed a non-binding letter of intent with Broadcom worth up to $200 billion covering memory, foundry services, and advanced packaging. Meanwhile, Naver — together with investor Brookfield — secured $1 billion from Nvidia to expand its AI data center to 200 megawatts and roughly 100,000 GPUs, a move personally announced by Jensen Huang at the summit. Hyundai Motor Group outlined plans to deploy 50,000 of Nvidia’s Blackwell processors for what it calls “physical AI,” and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology launched a joint research lab with the chipmaker.
Days earlier, Huang was in Japan meeting with the heads of Toyota, Fujitsu, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Kioxia to discuss deploying physical AI in factory settings. “The next frontier of AI lies in the physical world, and that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Japan,” Huang said. Three major robotics and automation players — Kawasaki, Fanuc, and Yaskawa — are already using Nvidia’s technology.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?
Moody’s Sounds the Alarm on Debt-Fueled Expansion
The euphoria around these deals is tempered by a sobering assessment from Moody’s. The rating agency calculated that the direct debt of major AI investors — including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle, and CoreWeave — stands at roughly $460 billion. On top of that, lease obligations total $1.2 trillion, with $820 billion tied to data centers still under construction. Moody’s projects industry-wide AI spending will hit $785 billion in 2026 and cross the $1 trillion threshold in 2027.
Oracle now carries a negative outlook on its Baa2 credit rating, while CoreWeave is rated Ba3 — deep into junk territory. Moody’s also flagged a circular risk: much of the investment flows back into the same partner companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, creating a web of interconnected exposure that could amplify any downturn.
The market has already shown it can punish overleveraged players. After weak results from Alphabet and Tesla, the “Magnificent Seven” collectively lost $797 billion in market value in a single trading session. Notably, suppliers like Micron and Nvidia benefited from the rotation, as investors shifted toward hardware vendors rather than the heavily indebted data center operators.
Growth Is Slowing — But From an Extraordinary Base
Nvidia’s operational performance remains stellar by any normal standard. Revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended April 26, surged 85% year over year to $81.6 billion, beating already elevated Wall Street forecasts. The data center segment alone generated $75 billion, up 92% from a year earlier. Edge computing, which includes robotics training, grew 29%.
Yet the trajectory is unmistakably decelerating. Analysts project revenue growth of roughly 219% between fiscal 2026 and 2029 — a figure that would be extraordinary for most companies but pales next to the approximately 700% expansion Nvidia delivered over the prior three years. The stock’s performance tells a similar story: shares closed Friday at €182.00, down 0.8% on the day and roughly 10% below their 2026 high of €202.50. The year-to-date gain of 13.55% looks modest compared with gains of 39% in 2025, 171% in 2024, and 239% in 2023.
Nvidia at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
A Backlog That Buys Time
What keeps the bull case intact is Nvidia’s order book. Confirmed demand through 2027 now totals roughly $1 trillion, according to the latest calculations. Huang had previously cited about $500 billion in AI chip orders for 2025 and 2026 combined. That backlog provides multiyear revenue visibility and underscores how deeply embedded Nvidia’s hardware has become in customer roadmaps.
At 23 times expected earnings, with projected annual profit growth of about 44% over the coming years, the stock is not pricing in any premium for the long-term robotics opportunity. The next quarterly report, due around late August, will test whether the 2026 slowdown in share price appreciation reflects a genuine cooling in AI infrastructure spending or merely a breather after an unprecedented run. Until then, the Japanese partnerships and that trillion-dollar backlog remain the optimists’ strongest cards — even as Moody’s warnings hang over the table.
Ad
Nvidia Stock: New Analysis - 26 July
Fresh Nvidia information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.
Disclaimer regarding our articles: No investment advice, no buy or sell recommendation. Information on prices, companies, and markets is provided without guarantee; changes are possible at any time. Stock market transactions can lead to substantial losses. Our articles are created and reviewed in whole or in part automatically with the support of AI.
