Nvidia is assembling a new wave of artificial-intelligence infrastructure deals worth more than $750bn, accelerating a pattern that critics in the United States and Europe describe as circular financing. The chipmaker committed $5bn to Safe Superintelligence, the startup co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and is in talks to provide a $250bn backstop for OpenAI to lease a 10-gigawatt data-centre site in Ohio. A separate initiative with South Korea’s SK Group, parent of SK Hynix, carries a value exceeding $500bn and includes building more than two gigawatts of AI data centres on the Korean peninsula. Nvidia’s shares fell on the announcements, briefly ceding the title of world’s most valuable company to Apple.

The mechanism fuelling unease is straightforward: Nvidia supplies capital or credit support to AI developers and cloud providers, which then use those funds to purchase Nvidia’s own processors. The Ohio project, located on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site on federal land, would see Japan’s government fund a $33bn natural-gas plant to power it, with the US eventually claiming 90% of revenue once Japan recoups its investment. OpenAI is also discussing a $350bn chip purchase from Nvidia for the same site. Viewed from Seoul, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the moment as a “golden age for Korea,” citing booming semiconductor and industrial sectors.

Scepticism is mounting among portfolio managers and prominent investors. Gary Tan of Allspring Global Investments noted that while the deals reinforce long-term confidence in AI infrastructure, “investors remain concerned about circular financing.” Michael Burry, the American investor known for his bet against the housing market before 2008, publicly criticised the structure, warning that such arrangements expose the industry to enormous risk if sentiment shifts. Analysts in London point to similar moves by Google, which backed lease payments for five data centres used by Anthropic, helping the OpenAI rival secure $35bn in financing. The transactions have left many AI firms increasingly interconnected and reliant on rising debt levels to fund megaprojects.

The immediate milestone is the Ohio site’s first phase, expected to deliver 800 megawatts of power by 2028. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in allocating access to the site, with Anthropic, Microsoft and Google also expressing interest. The scale of the commitments—Nvidia’s total exposure across these deals now rivals the GDP of mid-sized economies—means the next factual test will be whether the first power comes online on schedule and whether the AI services that justify such infrastructure materialise at the pace assumed by the financing structures.