Nvidia has been backing the credit of artificial intelligence (AI) data center projects amid growing concerns over funding, according to a report by tech media outlet The Information.

Analyzing disclosures by Nvidia and other companies on the 21st local time, the outlet reported that Nvidia's guarantees and other commitments supporting new data centers reach up to $164.5 billion (approx. 221 trillion won).

These commitments include promises to pay landlords on behalf of tenants if they fail to pay rent, as well as commitments to purchase data center capacity.

A significant portion of this amount is concentrated in a single deal.

The lease guarantee for an Ohio data center being developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, accounts for 64% of the total at up to $105 billion (approx. 141 trillion won).

This data center will be leased by OpenAI.

The rest consists of commitments to purchase unsold capacity from cloud providers ($36 billion), data center lease commitments contracted directly by Nvidia to pass on to customers ($20 billion), and guarantees for data center leases by cloud providers ($3.5 billion).

Apart from these guarantees and commitments, Nvidia has directly invested or pledged to invest $7 billion (approx. 9.4 trillion won) in neocloud (AI-specialized cloud) companies.

The outlet described this as Nvidia acting "somewhat like a central bank."

Market sentiment is uneasy.

The stock prices of CoreWeave, Nebius, and Iris plunged last week, while Nvidia-backed Lambda and others have withdrawn or delayed their initial public offerings (IPOs).

Permion, an Australian neocloud company backed by Nvidia, also scrapped its roughly $5 billion Australian IPO due to weak demand.

Nebius even declined to participate in Nvidia's guarantee program.

Wall Street financial institutions funding some data center projects have also grown cautious.

The outlet pointed out that while Nvidia is already carrying a substantial amount of commitments and investor demand to hedge against its own debt defaults is rising, it may have to step in with additional support to maintain industry confidence.

If neoclouds fail to find customers or secure funding, forcing Nvidia to step in, questions could grow regarding Nvidia's growth outlook.

Non-hyperscalers (large-scale data center operators), including neoclouds and major corporations, accounted for $40 billion (approx. 53.7 trillion won)—45% of Nvidia's second-quarter (May to June) data center revenue—more than double the figure from a year ago.

In particular, the fact that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are increasing investments in alternatives to Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) is also a risk factor.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)