Nvidia raises $500bn for AI Data Centres

**Luke Wilson** (0:01)
Another deal in the AI space to the tune of half a trillion dollars. It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service. I'm Luke Wilson. Users pay up to a hundred thousand dollars to see posts on Truth Social faster. And with the cost of living on the rise and an energy crisis, Zambia heads to the polls.
Yes, it's a new story that we've got used to hearing.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Open AI closed the funding round that raised the most money ever by a private tech company.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:36)
Amazon shares hitting a record high on news of a 38 billion dollar compute deal with Open AI.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:41)
Google and Anthropic now officially announcing that new cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars.

**Luke Wilson** (0:46)
Deal after deal done to keep up with the soaring demand for artificial intelligence. But the latest one is a blockbuster. The American chip maker Nvidia has partnered with some of the world's biggest banks and investment firms to raise half a trillion dollars to build more data centers to power AI.
Earlier I spoke to Eileen Burbage, tech investor and founding partner at the venture capital firms, Passion Capital and NFG.

**Eileen Burbage** (1:11)
A lot of the details have yet to be released, but what it sounds like is Nvidia is using its considerable weight to pull together financiers that will help to finance this next wave as they've described it, of AI capital infrastructure build. So in effect, they've got these great big parties that have all committed in one way or another to fund up to another 500 US billion dollars worth of capital expenditure for artificial intelligence.
I think that the target of this funding would be for presumably Nvidia customers or clients, for example, to help them with building out the infrastructure they would need, and also acquiring or making purchase orders for Nvidia chips. And Nvidia itself has suggested it would also be willing to backstop some of these loans.

**Luke Wilson** (2:02)
And 500 billion dollars, big number, but there seems to be suggestions that that number could get even bigger.

**Eileen Burbage** (2:09)
They did allude to that. Yes, they said 500 billion dollars or more.
And obviously, I think the whole sentiment is one of positivity, optimism. I think they're trying to harken the sense of when railways were invested in, when massive transport infrastructure was laid down, this is the type of initiative or I guess momentum these parties are suggesting they're willing to back now this time.

**Luke Wilson** (2:35)
And Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO, talked about when announcing this deal, talks about new AI factories, a new class of infrastructure. Is this a new stage in this story, do you think?

**Eileen Burbage** (2:47)
I think he's just leaning into this narrative that we're only at the beginning, that there's so much more to be realized for investment, for productivity, for this next stage of artificial general intelligence, for everything that's coming. And I think what they're now trying to draw resemblance to is not even an industrial revolution. I think they would characterise it as far greater than that. So yeah, I think he's saying, get ready, we're not finished. We're still just getting started and there's a lot more to come.

**Luke Wilson** (3:19)
Tech investor Eileen Burbage there. Isaac Stel is investment manager at Wealth Club. And Isaac, US markets have opened in the last hour or so. How are investors reacting to this deal?

**Isaac Stel** (3:31)
Well, US markets are very much in a Holden pattern today as they digest this latest news about AI-related expenditure with the S&P up just one tenth of a percent.
It comes off the back of huge amounts of the expenditure already committed to the AI build-out. Now, despite the eye-catching headline numbers, investors seem to be a little cautious with Nvidia's shares slipping by around 1% today. But the key question investors are now asking themselves is, when will this expenditure actually start to produce monetary results?

**Luke Wilson** (3:57)
And looking at oil prices again, quite a bit of volatility today.

**Isaac Stel** (4:02)
Yes, since the oil price has been on something of a roller-coaster ride in recent weeks, surging to $100 a barrel before retreating to $79 and now sitting at $88 today.
Rumours of a deal to reopen the Strait of Kormouz seem to be drawing closer with Pakistan's defence minister stating the US and Iran are close to some sort of arrangement. But for now, however, any news relating to a reopening or continued closure will likely be the key driver of prices.

**Luke Wilson** (4:25)
Isaac Sell, Investment Manager at Wealth Club, thank you. Trump Media, the company behind Donald Trump's Truth Social platform, has reported a quarterly loss of more than $230 million.