The bigger change is happening on Nvidia’s balance sheet. <\/p>\n
The chipmaker’s public and private equity holdings reached $95.6 billion at the end of July, up from less than $100 million in early 2020. Nvidia says its broader equity investments now total roughly $99 billion. <\/p>\n
The portfolio now includes stakes in Intel (INTC<\/a>), CoreWeave (CRWV<\/a>), Coherent (COHR<\/a>), Nokia (NOK<\/a>), Synopsys (SNPS<\/a>), and Nebius (NBIS<\/a>), among others. <\/p>\n Huang sounded anything but worried about the scale of those investments. “I think the only regret that I have is that I didn’t invest more and sooner,” he said of Nvidia’s investments in AI labs.<\/strong> <\/p>\n And those investments are only one piece of a much bigger push. <\/p>\n Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said frontier AI labs have “extraordinary demand” for computing power but are “growing faster than what their balance sheets and credit profiles can support.”<\/strong> <\/p>\n In plain English, some of Nvidia’s fastest-growing customers want more AI infrastructure than their finances can comfortably support. <\/p>\n Nvidia is stepping into the gap. <\/p>\n And this is becoming a meaningful piece of Nvidia’s business. Kress said AI labs where Nvidia expects to use its balance sheet could account for roughly a quarter of its business next year.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Investors have been comparing Nvidia to a central bank for months. Morgan Stanley has called the strategy “balance-sheet-as-a-service” \u2014 using Nvidia’s financial strength to help keep its customers spending. <\/p>\n -That now includes giving some large customers as long as a year to pay for data center purchases. Accounts receivable<\/a>, or money customers still owe Nvidia, jumped to $63.1 billion, while the average collection time rose to 60 days from 45. <\/p>\n Nvidia is also backing some customers more directly. With some AI cloud providers, it guarantees a minimum level of revenue, helping them secure financing \u2014 then it gets a cut if revenue rises above that floor.<\/strong> <\/p>\n “We’re not making loans in this model,” Kress said. “We get paid twice, once on the hardware sale and again through the share of rental revenue.”<\/strong> <\/p>\n It also disclosed as much as $108.5 billion of guarantees. Almost all of that \u2014 $105 billion \u2014 is tied to the SB Energy data center buildout for OpenAI<\/a>. <\/p>\n That support is not money Nvidia is handing over today. It phases in as nine data centers come online beginning around fiscal 2029 and shrinks as OpenAI makes payments. <\/p>\n Nvidia is also trying to pull far more outside money into the build-out. The company says it has preliminary agreements with large investors aimed at channeling more than $500 billion into AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n The idea is simple: Nvidia does not want to pay for the whole boom itself. It wants to help make the projects easier to finance. <\/p>\n That fits with Nvidia’s own description of AI infrastructure as an “investable asset class.” <\/p>\n The strategy builds on a shift already visible last quarter, when Nvidia’s cash machine was funding both sides of the AI trade<\/a>. It also comes as Big Tech increasingly borrows to fund the AI build-out<\/a>. <\/p>\n And shareholders are still getting paid. <\/p>\n Nvidia returned about $25.8 billion through buybacks and dividends during the quarter \u2014 more than the $21.3 billion in free cash flow<\/a>, or cash left after running and investing in the business. It also issued $25 billion of debt, though there is no indication that borrowing specifically funded the buybacks. <\/p>\n Nvidia’s investment portfolio is getting big enough to affect its profits too. Gains on those investments added $7.8 billion to income during the quarter. <\/p>\n Nvidia’s balance sheet is becoming part of the AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n Jared Blikre is the global markets and data editor for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @SPYJared<\/a> or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com. <\/p>\n<\/a> Nvidia filings, Yahoo Finance <\/p>\n
<\/a> Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a doorstep after attending the AI Ecosystem Reception in Tokyo, Japan, July 16, 2026. (REUTERS\/Manami Yamada\/File Photo) \u00b7 REUTERS \/ REUTERS <\/p>\n