Nvidia is trading near its all-time high, but Wall Street is increasingly scrutinizing the company’s ambitious plan to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure. The chipmaker announced in August that it would work with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR on the financing effort. Nvidia has argued that its high-end GPUs can act as productive assets that generate long-duration revenue, potentially remaining useful for up to 10 years as software extends workloads. However, banks and credit investors are taking a more conservative stance, underwriting GPUs on a much shorter three-to-four-year depreciation schedule and seeking stronger guarantees before accepting them as collateral for long-term debt.
Reuters reported that lenders are not yet convinced top-tier GPUs will retain enough revenue-generating value over a decade to support Nvidia’s envisioned debt structures. Some financing structures under discussion could include Nvidia guarantees or long-term revenue contracts from investment-grade customers, similar to CoreWeave’s $8.5 billion GPU-backed loan, which was supported by contractual payments from Meta. This debate arrives as cloud operators and data-center developers increasingly borrow billions for AI capacity before it begins generating revenue, and as a separate $300 billion wave of AI guarantees shows technology companies absorbing more financing risk.
On the stock front, Nvidia rose 0.8% in premarket trading Thursday to $230.19, still below its all-time closing high of $235.74 set on May 14. The shares have gained 22% so far in 2026 and 17% in the third quarter alone. Investors are watching two key catalysts: Nvidia’s next earnings report expected in mid-to-late November, and the reported initial public offering of Anthropic, the Claude chatbot maker, also planned for November. Nvidia agreed to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic last year at a valuation around $350 billion; the AI company is now expected to seek a valuation closer to $2 trillion when it goes public.
In its last quarterly report released August 26, Nvidia beat expectations with earnings per share of $2.22 versus estimates of $2.09 and revenue of $96.22 billion versus forecasts of $92.27 billion, up 106% year over year. The company also authorized a fresh $150 billion share buyback on September 28, bringing total remaining authorization to about $235 billion through fiscal 2028. Analysts maintain a consensus buy rating and an average price target of $324.14. Historical fourth-quarter strength also favors the stock: it has averaged a 22% gain in Q4 since 1999 and 17% over the last five years. Nvidia pays a quarterly dividend of $0.25, paid on October 1 to shareholders of record as of September 10.
