Nvidia’s $250 Billion OpenAI Guarantee Talks Split the Market on AI’s Financing Future
Published on 07/28/2026 at 10:11 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The chipmaker that has become synonymous with the artificial intelligence boom finds itself at the center of a debate that goes far beyond its latest product cycle. Nvidia’s shares slid 5.02 percent on Monday to €172.88, not because of disappointing earnings or a competitor’s breakthrough, but because of a deal that hasn’t even been signed yet.
Reports that Nvidia is negotiating a guarantee of up to $250 billion for OpenAI — alongside financing $350 billion in purchases — have exposed a growing fault line in how investors view the economics underpinning the AI infrastructure buildout. The discussions, which sources say remain in early stages and could still collapse or change materially, would help OpenAI lease computing capacity at a massive data center hub being built by a SoftBank subsidiary in Ohio, with a planned $500 billion investment and 10 gigawatts of power capacity.
The numbers are staggering enough on their own. But the disconnect with Nvidia’s own balance sheet makes them even more striking. The company’s most recent quarterly report caps its total guarantee volume for lease obligations at $3.5 billion. A $250 billion commitment would be roughly 71 times that figure.
A Sector Moving at Two Speeds
The Nvidia-OpenAI financing saga unfolded against a broader week of contradictory signals across technology stocks. While the chip giant grappled with credit market jitters, other names in the sector posted tangible wins that underscored just how uneven the landscape has become.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?
Enterprise software bellwether ServiceNow provided a much-needed counter-narrative. The company delivered earnings per share of $0.90, beating the $0.86 consensus, on revenue of nearly $4 billion that also topped estimates. Its net margin climbed to 12.59 percent. The results offered relief to a market increasingly worried that AI agents would cannibalize traditional enterprise software. A new integration with NinjaOne, which improves IT transparency by feeding endpoint data directly into ServiceNow’s configuration database, added operational heft to the story.
The market rewarded the news: ServiceNow shares rose 1.24 percent to €94.34, bringing the weekly gain to 5.43 percent and the monthly advance to 7.82 percent. Analysts responded with a flurry of price target upgrades. Evercore ISI lifted its target to $160 from $150, JPMorgan to $150 from $145, and Bernstein to $248 from $236. UBS was the outlier, trimming its target slightly — a reminder that even amid broad approval, not every house sees the rally as fully justified.
The Bull Case: Strength, Not Desperation
Proponents of the OpenAI guarantee structure argue it represents a savvy strategic move rather than a sign of distress. Nvidia, they contend, is leveraging its superior balance sheet in a market where chips remain scarce and anyone building AI infrastructure is spending heavily. In this environment, a simple purchase order no longer suffices. Companies secure supply by tying purchase commitments to financing.
CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly pushed back against accusations of circular financing. Referring to an earlier investment in CoreWeave, he dismissed the notion, arguing the sum represents only a small fraction of what customers would need to raise in capital markets anyway. Calling the arrangement circular, he said, was absurd.
Morningstar analysts view the guarantee agreements primarily as a growth lever that helps Nvidia sell more hardware and accelerate AI adoption. A freshly announced partnership with South Korea’s SK Group, targeting a combined business volume of more than $500 billion, adds further weight to the bullish thesis. For optimists, the current pullback looks like a buying opportunity, not a trend reversal.
The Bear Case: Vendor Financing at Unprecedented Scale
The other side of the argument paints a far less comfortable picture. Investor Michael Burry described the arrangement as further evidence of a self-reinforcing loop, quipping that “round and round it goes.”
A Bloomberg-quoted strategist put it more bluntly: if Nvidia guarantees even more of OpenAI’s data center debt, it deepens a vendor financing structure already under scrutiny. That, he argued, signals financing stress in the AI buildout as much as it signals demand.
Compounding the concern is OpenAI’s lack of an investment-grade credit rating. The entire construction is designed to allow SoftBank’s SB Energy subsidiary to borrow against Nvidia’s balance sheet rather than its own. Critics see this as a structural risk that extends beyond the mechanics of a single deal, feeding worries that have been building for weeks: pure demand for computing power no longer seems sufficient to justify the industry’s massive capital expenditure plans.
The China market adds another layer of uncertainty. Despite years of licensing discussions, it remains effectively closed. Nvidia’s own CFO acknowledged earlier this year that some H200 chips had been approved for Chinese customers, but the company has yet to book any revenue from them.
Nvidia’s Own Stock Tells the Story
The market’s anxiety is visible in Nvidia’s chart. The stock now trades at €170.70, down 1.26 percent on the day and 6.17 percent on the week. At 15.70 percent below its 52-week high of €202.50, the gap is widening. The relative strength index of 41.4 signals weakening momentum, even though the stock remains up 12.02 percent year-to-date.
Analysts remain overwhelmingly bullish, with “Strong Buy” ratings and price targets well above $300 — a view the credit markets clearly do not share. The key technical level to watch is the 200-day moving average at €166.18. Holding above that keeps the pullback in the realm of a footnote. A slide toward the 52-week low of €139.78 would turn the correction into a serious challenge for the entire AI rally.
Nvidia at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Beyond the Chip Giant
The week’s biggest surprise came from an unexpected corner. Outlook Therapeutics received FDA approval for LYTENAVA, the first authorized ophthalmic bevacizumab for wet age-related macular degeneration in the U.S. — and it came two business days ahead of the scheduled decision date. The market hadn’t anticipated the early clearance.
The company expects twelve years of reference product exclusivity and is targeting entry into the multibillion-dollar anti-VEGF eye therapy market. But the stock’s celebration was short-lived. Shares closed at $1.06, down 24.20 percent on the day, with a weekly loss of 25 percent and a 30-day decline of nearly 37 percent. The extreme volatility — around 123 percent on a 30-day basis — is typical for micro-cap biotech stocks after binary regulatory events. BTIG upgraded the stock from Neutral to Buy with a $4.00 target, while HC Wainwright struck a more cautious tone, questioning whether Lytenava can compete against cheaper alternatives like Avastin or Lucentis.
Keel Infrastructure, the successor to Bitfarms following its relisting in the U.S., continued its transformation from pure Bitcoin miner to AI and HPC infrastructure operator. As of late March, the company held $520 million in cash and Bitcoin, with a development pipeline of roughly 2.2 gigawatts across sites in Washington, Pennsylvania and Quebec. The stock has been under pressure, losing 4.93 percent on the day to $4.05, with a weekly decline of 12.90 percent and a monthly drop of nearly 30 percent. The 30-day volatility of almost 93 percent far exceeds the sector average. Despite the recent pullback, the stock is still up over 430 percent over the past year — a reflection of how enthusiastically the market has rewarded the pivot from mining to infrastructure, even if valuations now look stretched. Ten of eleven analysts maintain Buy ratings with a 12-month price target of $6.40.
What Comes Next
The next few weeks will determine whether Nvidia’s financing concerns are a temporary hiccup or the beginning of a deeper reassessment. The most immediate catalysts are clear: confirmation or denial of the OpenAI terms, and the upcoming quarterly results from Microsoft, Amazon and Meta. Their commentary on capital expenditure plans could quickly reset sentiment for the entire AI hardware sector.
If the OpenAI talks crystallize into a signed agreement with clearly capped guarantee amounts, the market may reinterpret the arrangement as a demand-securing mechanism, supporting a recovery toward the 50-day moving average and beyond. If the talks collapse, expand further, or trigger a formal review of debt concentration, the stock could drift back toward the 200-day average or even the 52-week low.
For now, the chipmaker that powered the AI revolution finds itself in an unfamiliar position: waiting for clarity on whether its role as financier is a sign of strength or a symptom of strain.
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