Nvidia's AI Factory Ambitions Hit Financing Wall

Nvidia and Digital Realty have ambitious plans to build AI factories at gigawatt scale, but their collaboration has hit a financing wall. The two companies are developing the Omniverse DSX blueprint, a framework for building scalable AI compute facilities designed for customers that aren't Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.

The focus is on non-hyperscale environments, which serve enterprises, governments, and research institutions that need serious GPU capacity but can't build their own sovereign clouds. Digital Realty has already closed a $3.25 billion US hyperscale data center fund to support more than $10 billion in new AI infrastructure investment.

Nvidia is reportedly considering residual-value support mechanisms of up to 25% on specific projects, which would help lenders mitigate the risk of hardware devaluation. However, this means Nvidia would be effectively backstopping the debt on its own products, adding another layer to its already substantial off-balance-sheet figures.