Chip titan Nvidia and major Wall Street financial institutions announced Monday a plan to mobilize at least $500 billion in capital to invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure, marking a fresh push in capacity expansion.
The partnership includes Goldman Sachs and investment firms Apollo, BlackRock and KKR, Nvidia said on Monday, without providing details on the timeframe for raising more than $500 billion.
The move highlights how surging demand for AI computing capacity is drawing institutional investors, as governments, companies and startups race to build data centers to support AI workloads.
Nvidia is by far the leading provider of chip systems used to train and run AI models. Cloud giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in expanding AI data centers.
The new funds could benefit AI research labs and startups, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told U.S. broadcaster CNBC.
Nvidia itself has invested in AI companies in recent months, with some of those firms subsequently using the proceeds to buy the chipmaker's technology. Such circular deals have raised concerns among some investors.
Huang said building data centers requires an investment of about $50 billion to $60 billion for each gigawatt (GW) of power consumption.
BlackRock boss Larry Fink said current estimates suggest the U.S. alone will need more than 70 gigawatts of AI data center capacity.
Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon acknowledged that there would be winners and losers in the race to develop AI. The partners nevertheless expect computing capacity to become an established investment category.
Big Tech companies have signaled that spending on AI would not slow down, with combined outlays set to surpass $730 billion this year.
