75 points by adletbalzhanov 3 hours ago | 6 comments
aurareturn 2 hours ago
Why is it a big deal?

Nvidia invested $2b into CoreWeave for 9% equity stake. CoreWeave is spending $35b in CapEx in 2026. Therefore, Nvidia's investment is only 5.7% of CoreWeave's single year CapEx. The other $32b is coming from other sources that isn't Nvidia. This is hardly circular.

Nvidia invests in Neoclouds because it's a hedge against hyperscalers having too much power, ie designing and prioritizing their own chips, and not fully using Nvidia's rack design. Neoclouds give hyperscalers competition. Neoclouds accept Nvidia investments because it allows them to secure Nvidia chips first, which is a competitive advantage since new Nvidia chips have been as much as ~5-20x more efficient than old Nvidia chips.

Nvidia was planning to directly compete against hyperscalers through DGX Cloud. They cancelled public DGX Cloud access when they found that investing in Neoclouds would accomplish the same goals without having to compete against their biggest customers.

If you're Nvidia, it's smart because Neoclouds that you have a large stake in will deploy your full stack from GPUs to networking to storage racks. They will share valuable usage data back to you so you can design a better next generation. Hyperscalers are likely a lot less cooperative, prefer to use their own designs if possible, and will guard their usage data.

vb-8448 51 minutes ago
My understanding is that it's not about the money itself but the model:

- you fund a new company and sign long terms contracts with it - this new company uses the money you gave it and a lot of debt (backed by long term contracts) to build datacenters and buy a lot of GPU - your figures look great

What happens when they run out of debt or funds? If they reach some kind of profitability it's not a big deal, but if not ...

EDIT

Forget to mention the buyback of unused capacity problem: what happens to your figures when you have to buy back tons of unused GPUs?

marcosdumay 29 minutes ago
Yes, circular financing is not by itself a problem.

It being that size, lasting for that long, and the total lack of viable products created by it are the problem. Financing only adds leverage, that makes every loss or profit larger.

philipallstar 25 minutes ago
> If they reach some kind of profitability it's not a big deal, but if not ...

What is the end of this sentence?

InsideOutSanta 17 minutes ago
... then it is a big deal.
KaoruAoiShiho 2 hours ago
You're probably just responding to the headline but this person is an AI bull and isn't claiming it's a big deal, she's going into it and explaining it.
aurareturn 2 hours ago
It's a bad headline because most of the article isn't about circular financing and it's only 5.7% of anyway.
hirako2000 1 hour ago
Just the look and feel and the subscribe fixed position in particular, made me bounce.
rapidfl 55 minutes ago
People are looking for the AI bear case - so this headline gotta work better. Its not a bad idea haha. More people suspect there is some circular shenanigans but want confirmation -- so maybe this is the best way to lure them in. Come as the bear, stay for the bull.

With just these 2 comments, now I'm really gonna read that article.

Mistletoe 3 minutes ago
Can someone even outline the AI bull case? I can’t fathom one at all.

https://isaiprofitable.com/

The only profitable company is the one running the scam.

gyanchawdhary 2 hours ago
[dead]
re-thc 1 hour ago
> Why is it a big deal? Nvidia invested $2b into CoreWeave for 9% equity stake.

Depends if they actually got the $2b in real money. There's a difference.

It's a big deal if no money was involved. Nothing even entered the company directly. Some deals have structured with Special Purpose Vehicles where money goes to the SPV. The SPV buys GPUs with it (from Nvidia). GPUs is loaned back to the company involved. So this company is stuck with this GPU rental, which may or may not be what they want and not $2b.

This sounds like a bad deal? So Nvidia had to sweeten the deal and promise min utilization on those GPUs by renting it themselves even if they don't need it.

So what's income and what's expense here?

That's the problem. It's inflated and messed up.

bwfan123 1 hour ago
Circular financing is a dead horse - dont beat it. Instead, what is more interesting could be: Is there a path to these builds becoming economically profitable ? Towards this, some metrics to watch are: 1) ROI per token per dollar 2) Enterprise token budgets. And at what point there is an overbuild relative to the token roi. Alternatively, pressure on token costs due to the open weights models etc.
wmf 1 hour ago
These questions can't really be answered now because things are moving too fast. That may explain why people are latching on to things they can prove like circular financing even if those arguments are pretty weak.
484994949595 29 minutes ago
if the money moves in circles the consequences of new money stopping when predicted profitability falls become a lot more dramatic
charcircuit 2 hours ago
Would this author prefer that Nvidia buy equity using GPUs directly? I don't think it actually counts as circular.
re-thc 1 hour ago
> I don't think it actually counts as circular.

It is. The GPUs go on to be used to get loans to then get more GPUs.

484994949595 2 hours ago
boomers will "invest" at a loss in anything that has the AI tag, this is a non issue. the whole ecosystem can bled cash for another couple years while the usual suspects blabber on about the singularity to korean pension funds
Mistletoe 2 hours ago
Isn’t that just what people tell themselves at the top?

https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...

uncivilized 1 hour ago
You're saying people tell themselves at the top that the run can continue for another few years?
wmf 1 hour ago
That's how every bubble works.
paradoxyl 1 hour ago
I predict a 2030 end date for the bubble, as that is when many globalist think tanks declare they will invade Russia to take their resources, and it's unlikely even China can ignore that, and here comes World War III.
rwyinuse 5 minutes ago
In case you didn't notice, nobody has invaded Russia since Hitler. Instead it has been Russia invading other countries, using whatever imaginary threat as an excuse.

You may be right about WW3 in 2030, but based on the track record it's more likely that Russia will be the invader.

root-parent 1 hour ago
I just have a AWS Lambda function, who tracks if Pieter Thiel private plane is doing a run to New Zealand...
anon291 2 hours ago
All financing is circular. This concern is beyond the pale contrived

Financing is circular because creating a liability for one party (debt) creates an asset for another (the bank) off of which more debt can be secured

A bank / financier sells trust and reassurance. They otherwise invent most money from thin air.

lokar 56 minutes ago
That’s not the point. The issue is that loaning/investing to a client so they can buy from you conflates your investments with your revenue.

It may be fine, or not. It it has been a frequent type of manipulation to obfuscate the real accounting situation.

InsideOutSanta 13 minutes ago
Yeah, it's basically creating the illusion of demand and revenue. Lots of fraud in the past relied on companies "investing" into companies which then bought from the investor. I'm not sure to what degree this is happening now, though, and to what degree this is benign.
philipallstar 22 minutes ago
People are investing because if Nvidia are essentially buying shares with graphics cards then they're motivated to make this stuff work. If the invested in company's share price tanks, Nvidia loses out, and I imagine quite a few people are willing to win or lose alongside Nvidia.
dainiusse 1 hour ago
Yandex, not nebius. Surprised how the world gets on kgb again and again, and again