According to SemiAnalysis, a leading research firm specializing in semiconductor and AI infrastructure, the next bottleneck for the AI industry will no longer be GPUs or data centers, but rather financing. The credit market will become the primary source of funding for this round of AI infrastructure construction. SemiAnalysis predicts that global annual AI capital expenditure will well exceed $2 trillion by 2028, and cumulative global AI capital expenditure will reach approximately $11.1 trillion between 2024 and 2029. The firm further points out that Nvidia is actively providing "revenue guarantees" for AI computing power operators (Neocloud), attempting to transform GPUs into an infrastructure asset acceptable to the financial markets. Based on this, SemiAnalysis predicts that by 2029, outstanding AI debt will exceed $7 trillion, becoming the second largest asset-backed debt market after the US mortgage-backed financing market (slightly over $13 trillion).
Specifically, Nvidia's "backup" plan leverages its own AA/Aa2 investment-grade credit rating to provide Neocloud with a minimum revenue guarantee, thereby reducing bank lending risk and leveraging trillions of dollars in AI infrastructure financing. In other words, Nvidia is no longer just a GPU supplier, but acts as the "guarantor of last resort" in the AI industry's financing system through credit enhancement, transforming its own credit into financing capabilities for the entire AI ecosystem. SemiAnalysis therefore likens Nvidia to a "central bank of the AI field."
