August 10, 2026
WHEN: Today, Monday, August 10, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime”
On the heels of reports that Nvidia will partner with Wall Street asset managers on a $500 billion AI infrastructure push, today on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” (M-F, 4PM-5PM ET), Becky Quick sat down with Nvidia Founder & CEO Jensen Huang and some of the biggest names on Wall Street including Jim Zelter, Apollo Global Management President, Larry Fink, BlackRock Chairman & CEO, Jon Gray, Blackstone President & COO, Bruce Flatt, Brookfield Corporation CEO, David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO and Waldemar Szlezak, KKR Global Head of Digital Infrastructure, to discuss the news. Video clips from the interview are available on CNBC.com.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BECKY QUICK: Welcome back to “Closing Bell: Overtime.” We have this big breaking news this afternoon about what's been happening when it comes to the AI infrastructure bill. This is news that was first out a little earlier today, but we can confirm that news at this point. Nvidia, working with some of the biggest names on Wall Street to secure financing for its customers. Joining right now with us to talk about all of this is Jensen Huang. He, of course, is Nvidia's founder and CEO. David Solomon is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Larry Fink is BlackRock CEO. Jon Gray is Blackstone's President. Waldemar Szlezak is Global Head of Digital Infrastructure at KKR. Jim Zelter is Apollo's President, and Bruce Flatt is Brookfield CEO. And gentlemen, welcome to all of you today. It's kind of amazing to get this group around the table, and Larry to have you joining us remotely, too. But we have to start with this news. Jensen, this is a big deal, and it's a big number. Half a trillion dollars more than that in terms of financing. We know this is an expensive bill, but tell us a little bit about how this came together and what exactly it is.
JENSEN HUANG: Well, first of all, I want to thank all my partners for joining me here today. I think this is the first time this has ever happened before, and I can't imagine a more important time to do it. We're announcing six partnerships today. These partnerships are going to pull together independent, long-term capital to fund and support AI infrastructure buildout. This is an extraordinary time, as you know, because this is the first time in some 60 years that the computing industry is going through a fundamental platform shift – from the way that software was done before to the way that it's going to be done in the future, called artificial intelligence. Fundamentally, what's different about this industry and this way of doing computing is that the computer is now part of the infrastructure – like electricity, like the internet – and so you have to think about it like its infrastructure and build it out accordingly. Every company will be powered by it, every country will build it. And so we're talking about an extraordinarily significant infrastructure bill. This is –
QUICK: With a very hefty price tag, too.
HUANG: It's a hefty price tag. Each gigawatt is something like $50, $60 billion. And so there's energy involved, there's land power and shell involved, and of course there's the computing part of it. This is, of course, also a milestone for our company. We used to build chips that we sell, and these are technology components that people buy and use. But now, Nvidia's AI factory platform is really an investable asset, an infrastructure asset. And the reason for that is because it's productive, is revenue generating. It is fungible. It's used by just about every cloud service provider. It runs every AI model. It runs algorithms of all different types. And so it has really broad, deep reach and off-takers. This is a really great opportunity for us to build out the infrastructure, take advantage of an asset that is investable, long life, and productive, and with the partnerships that we have here, we can support a really broad ecosystem build-out.
QUICK: Gentlemen, I'll say it's very unusual to have all of you in one place. Most of you compete on one level or another. A lot of times, you work together on things, too. But how did this come together? How did they all come to you? And David, I'll start with you on that.
DAVID SOLOMON: Well, I mean, you know, Jensen approached us, and you know, we've got a deep belief and a lot of confidence in Nvidia and what they're doing. We have a deep belief in the opportunity set that's ahead. We, like all the partners at the table, have been spending a lot of time raising capital and thinking about the capital that's necessary and how we create the best access to that capital for people that need it to move things forward. I think one of the things Goldman Sachs brings to the table is we have an extraordinary distribution network. So we obviously we bring capital, but we also bring a very, very unique distribution network. But Jensen came, approached us with the idea, and we said, you know, we'd love to talk to you about it. We have a deep belief in the direction of travel and the opportunity set over the course of the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years. As Jensen highlighted, it's a big infrastructure bill, and the capital markets are signaling that there's lots of capital available to support it, and we're trying to find all the different ways that we, as an organization, in partnership with other great firms that are doing similar things, can participate in getting the capital to the right places to extend this or accelerate this infrastructure bill.
QUICK: You know, I described it before as if I buy a GM car, I might get financing from GM. This is you kind of bringing other people from the outside to say these will be the partners that do this financing.
HUANG: You know, this really –
QUICK: It’s not – and by the way, it's not Nvidia's money that's coming up on this.
HUANG: That's right. This is all third-party, independent, long-term capital that all of my partners are going to go help us pull together. This is really quite extraordinary. This is a phase shift in the way that people think about computing. It used to be, you know, technology. Now it's infrastructure.
QUICK: Go ahead, Jim.
JIM ZELTER: And I would say, you know, this is really what David has explained. This is calling all precincts.
QUICK: Yeah.
ZELTER: This is American exceptionalism, and what Nvidia has created over the last 33 years coming together right now. But this is calling all precincts. Because really now, compute is an asset class. And when we think about the last 100 years, the last century of water and power utilities, you know, in 2026 and beyond, the next decade, the U.S. will lead this. It's a global imperative, but it's a U.S. imperative. And as I said before, this is really all precincts coming together, not just one market of equity or debt or banks, but it's all. It needs any and all.
QUICK: American exceptionalism, meaning that you are going to be building with an American company, Nvidia and others, but this is financing that could go around the globe, I think?
ZELTER: No – no – no – no doubt. But the depth and breadth of the U.S. global markets in aggregate is the envy of the world. Nvidia is one of the envies of the world that they've created. And what you're seeing here, this consortium of partners – and yes, we do compete, but we finance a tremendous amount together as well. And in the end of the day, this will benefit the U.S. economy as a competitive tool for the advancement for the next decade.
QUICK: Larry, let me get you in because you're not here around the table today, but I'd like to get your perspective on this. Is this new money that's going to be spent? Have you already raised this money? Is this money that you were going to be deploying into AI anyway, and it's just kind of funneling it toward certain partners?
LARRY FINK: Well, first of all, hi everyone. Jensen, thank you. Thank you for the trust that you’ve given BlackRock. We have some capital now, but we're going to be raising quite a bit more capital. As Jensen said, each gigawatt costs $50 to $60 billion to build out, and we're talking about in the United States alone, we're going to need over 70 gigawatts of power to fuel this. And then you add up everything else around the world, it's going to be an enormous financial opportunity. As Jim was talking about American exceptionalism, it has to flow through the American capital markets because this is the biggest source of capital. But the other angle that I think this is so important that we must also understand, you know, there is quite a bit of negativity around AI and data centers right now, but let's be clear. This is going to be creating a huge amount of jobs. You know, you think about even 100 megawatts of a data center requires as much as 3 million hours of workers. And so this should be looked upon as a great growth opportunity for the United States, furthering growth elsewhere in the world, and most importantly, we need to raise this money as fast as possible and put this to work because I think it's really imperative that the United States is the leader in AI in the world, and I think we need to be the leader in the disbursement of this technology around the world. And I think this is why this is so critical. And I applaud what Nvidia has done, bringing all these firms together and saying we have a common goal. We need to raise $500 billion. Obviously, that's an unprecedented amount of money, but we're going to have to raise trillions of dollars over the coming years. And I do believe this is going to be representing a fantastic investment. In fact, I think it's going to be such a large investment over time, you're going to see more and more allocation into this asset class. Jim talked about compute as an asset class, but importantly, I look at the financing of data centers – this is the very beginning, like what it was when I started in the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s, and I look upon this as a next future for financial engineering.
QUICK: All right, let me ask a question. Larry, David, you guys might be able to weigh in on this a little bit too, and Jon, I think you, too. But just the idea of how much money you need to raise with this, is there enough money within the public and private markets? Do you need government money that would do it? I mean, you think of national highway system when you had a build out like this, it had to be government money that was spending some of this. Is there enough money in our capital markets to handle this, and is it profitable for the investors? Who wants to take it? Jon, why don’t you jump in with this?
JON GRAY: Sure. I would say first off, it's great to be here. What Jensen has built is incredible. What I would say is, our markets are large, and it's one of the great strengths when we talk about America. When you look at our ability to finance $700 billion a year in automotive or a couple trillion dollars a year in housing, I think we're going to see a similar dynamic. And what is supporting it is supply and demand. So today, at our companies, we've seen a sevenfold increase in demand for LLMs in the last six months, and yet the amount of compute is not keeping up. The data centers, the power, the chips. And so what you're going to see here is people are going to begin to recognize that this is a financeable asset class. So, when you think about your home, you know, when you go to buy a house, the bank underwrites you, but they also look at the value of your home. When an airline goes to buy a plane, they look at the credit of that company, but also the plane. I think historically here the limitation has been investors have said, oh, I only want so much exposure to this hyperscaler, or maybe to this foundational model company. I think when people recognize how powerful and valuable this compute is, no matter who's using it, and in Jensen's case, they've got very fungible, flexible capabilities with their GPUs and the CUDA software. So, what I think is markets are going to recognize the opportunity. If the scale gets very, very big, which it is, pricing could widen out. But I think in the fullness of time, the recognition of the supply-demand imbalance and the value of the compute is going to draw capital in.
WALDEMAR SZLEZAK: Can I just add one thing?
QUICK: We'll jump here and here. Okay, let's talk about Brookfield in particular – what you guys are doing.
BRUCE FLATT: Look, just on Brookfield in particular, we've been building out backbone infrastructure since the company started. And originally it started with enormous amounts of power – solar, wind, gas. We moved to data centers, and with Jensen, we've now been moving to compute. Both financing but also building this compute. And we cannot build enough power. We cannot build enough compute for the demand that Jon's talking about. So this is not about is there too much financing being made. It's that we can't build it fast enough.
QUICK: But the question always becomes, will the demand stay at those levels? And Jensen, you see this. You see further out than probably anybody on what's happening here. Is there a point where we can't keep up at the moment, but the demand changes?
FLATT: Look, I think what's – and Jensen will have a really good opinion on this one – but what we're seeing in our industrial businesses is we are just scratching the surfaces in using AI and the productivity advances that it's giving us, and we don't even know how to use it yet. But the productivity advances they're giving us are incredible. And this is – it's going to – this – why this backbone is – it's laying the foundation in the world for the next evolution of business and wealth creation. It is because it's so evolutionary or revolutionary that it's going to change everything we do in the world. And that's why it's so important, and that's why with Jensen pulling capital together – I was going to start to go back to what Jon was talking about – is we're at a point where the situation is that there hasn't been the format for investors to invest into this, and we, David in particular, need to create the structures, and Jensen's leading this to create structures, because there's hundreds of trillions of dollars of money in the world –
QUICK: – and the structure – the structures look like what? They have low financing. They basically are – you get Nvidia's stamp of approval. Like these are customers that we're working with that we are giving our limited supplies to –
HUANG: And the system architectures are going to be specified in such a way that when we know that they deploy it, we can continuously improve it. We can bring all kinds of fungible and flexible AI models to it. And if anything were to happen, somebody else could take it over and operate it. And so that archi –
QUICK: – ok so that is a big deal.
HUANG: – that is a very big deal.
QUICK: And that's important, too. That this will be used by somebody, even if the players mentioned run out of cash at some point?
HUANG: There will always be a customer for that computing platform. And the reason for that is because, as you know, Nvidia's architecture is fairly universally adopted. And amongst every AI model –
FLATT: – and Becky, last week, we – Jensen and us – announced a deal in Korea. He's putting up a billion dollars, we're putting up $9 billion. NAVER is going to use the compute, and it's a – it's a system – you can now systematize that. What we need to do is take that and do it all across the world and all across companies to be able to systemize to bring more compute capacity to the market.
QUICK: Well, Jensen, that brings up – and I want to get to Waldemar in just a moment – but that brings up this important question. There have been all these big numbers that have thrown – been thrown around. What you're doing with SK. There was a Wall Street Journal story recently that suggested you'd be backstopping financing for $250 billion for an OpenAI plant in Ohio potentially. That's a lot of money, it's a lot of things to carry on your balance sheet. This is not that because this is not money that Nvidia is backstopping in any way, shape, or form. But how should we –
JENSEN: – and those two – those two things are not that either. In the case of SK, as you know, we're one of the largest users of memories in the world. We're the largest computer company in the world. And so we use a lot of memory, and our partnership with SK is multi years, and most of that is related to memory consumption and memory partnership. And so, that's what – that's the SK. With respect to OpenAI, I'm not – I won't comment about rumors. However, today's partnerships is really about expanding it beyond a larger, broader set of ecosystem partners.
QUICK: But you have $200 billion in free cash flow. You've got a huge balance sheet. Is it your prerogative to say, look, we are not going to pledge our balance sheet against all of these things because you can't, you have other things you're doing and that's why you bring outside financing partners?
HUANG: No, it's really because there's a phase shift in how we think about computing now, and my partners here have all talked about it really eloquently. This is really the first time that technology chips have become an investable asset class. This is a very big concept. It's a – this a big concept because the computers, these systems, are not like our PCs or like our phones. These are revenue-generating assets. Now, they're productive, they're long-lived, they're fungible, they're flexible. You can use it for all kinds of different things. And so you have the ability – you have the opportunity to support a very large ecosystem of off-takers and Nvidia developers and AI clouds and AI partners and enterprises all around the world, and it's incredibly revenue generating.
QUICK: Does that change how you see the investor that brings into this, or how you look at it on a –
SOLOMON: – well, the capital markets have always – I mean, this is in a simple form – and you did it yourself when you opened and you talked about GM financing a car. The capital markets have been asset-backed financing markets for a long, long time. You ask the question about capital availability. What we're doing is we're trying to find different ways to raise or to participate in raising the enormous amount of capital that's necessary to fund this infrastructure buildout. And you're starting to see, in a sense, you know, asset-based financing against this infrastructure bill. That's not surprising because these are real assets. They have real value. You can put a tangible value on it. And there's a lot of capital out there. I mean, one of the things I always step back and think about – there's $9 trillion when you think about the U.S. capital markets. There's $9 trillion in U.S. money market funds. There's 100 – more than $100 trillion in U.S. equities. There's a lot of capital out there. It's our job as stewards of the capital markets, as also asset management firms that steward capital for other investors, to find the best way to deploy this. And will it be a straight line? No. Will there be points, to Jon's point, where spreads widen out and it feels like things are going too fast? Yes. Will the returns from all of these things be ample? Of course not.
QUICK: Yeah.
SOLOMON: There'll be winners and losers. But that's what the capital markets do. And the capital markets are pretty effective and pretty efficient at getting those things right.
QUICK: Waldemar, let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing as the global head of digital infrastructure at KKR. You've been doing this for a long time.
SZLEZAK: Yes.
QUICK: What's changed? What's different? And what's so important about these announcements, this memorandums of understanding – memorandum of under – memorandums of understanding? Yeah, I guess it’s MOUs –
SZLEZAK: Yes.
QUICK: – that you would put into that. How does that change the equation for what you've been doing for a long time?
SZLEZAK: Well, thank you for having me, and this is an incredible panel of experts. And Jensen, thank you for the partnership. We're obviously building on the partnership we've established with Helix Digital Infrastructure, which is really an innovative way of building the entire stack of the value chain – from power, from molecule we call, it to the token. Which is I think what we're all describing here. I think what has changed is the speed. If you think about the buildout of internet over 15 years, a couple of gigawatts of power was effectively consumed in a centralized fashion. The cloud is the next evolution – 10, 15 years, maybe 3x that. Today, we're adding that much capacity on a quarterly basis, which is just incredible to think about it. Which it takes a whole village to finance this, so we think about it as capital and capability, and that's something we know really well at KKR. We've been doing this for quite some time, big investors in data centers and power, and I think we view this as a really – a generational investment opportunity. I want to touch on one thing, which is – which is I think what Jon mentioned, the intrinsic value of the compute layer. So I think we're big believers that that integration is occurring and the centralization of compute and needs to move up and the fungibility of compute. Of course, Nvidia is incredible innovator. Just talked about Vera Rubin earlier and rolling that out and the efficiency of production of tokens per watt of energy consumed is a step change function, which means that compute is declining rapidly and adoption is increasing even more rapidly. That's why price per token is down 99% and probably collapse in two cents, which means you have to have a very efficient way to finance it, which is I think the parties around here, and then build that infrastructure at scale. At scale, and that means time to market and innovate. What's really interesting is that AI — A100s, right? So you think about it that six years into it, maybe six or seven years into it, there is still a market for it. You still actually are revenue generating, to Jensen's point, that the utilization of those chips is very high, the price per chip is very high, and so you actually are getting revenue on that, and in that way, you can think about it as a revenue stream, and you can securitize it or effectively divide that risk and sell it – sell it to investors who want to participate anywhere in that stack. And that that really what gets us excited about this. Moving upstream, but also owning the big part of the downstream, as Jensen calls it, it’s the land power and shell.
QUICK: Jim, just a couple of weeks ago, you and Blackstone – or a couple of months ago, I should say – you and Blackstone had your own deal that you put together that was pretty similar to financing like this. I think it was $35 billion for Broadcom. How is – how is this different, and how do you kind of view these things?
ZELTER: I think it's another example. What Jensen was describing a few minutes ago – this whole ecosystem with compute and GPUs being a financial asset you could actually fund and finance – I think those are coming into the mainstream. And I think as we've all around the table have been doing this for three and four decades, the constant evolution of capitalism – and David's right, there will be excesses, there will be pullbacks. But what I think is different right now in ‘26 is in the past, we've thought about these things being financed either through the equity market or maybe the narrow market or private credit. As I said earlier, this is a calling all precincts, any and all. But what we've seen is in the equity market, people don't mind having concentrated bets. By the fact that we're bringing more of an ecosystem and a variety of MOUs, it allows the concentration concerns about one company or one counterparty. What Jon described is the value between not only in the company but actually facility, that's also going to bring in more dollars around the globe. So we're at a point in time right now, not only is the global industrial renaissance at a peak, but also we have a situation where we have more global folks who need long-term, long-duration retirement solutions. So whether that's done, you know, institutionally or globally or however it is, that's going to be the key to bringing this all together. So –
QUICK: David, let me ask you one question on this, though. We did have Steve Eiseman of the Big Short fame, who was on “Squawk Box” just about a week and a half ago, he came in and said, look, the AI trade is the entire market at this point. He said that could be a great thing or it could be a bad thing. But he said wherever you look, there are growth – and it's not just the chip stocks, it's not just the hyperscalers, it is not just the infrastructure companies that are doing all of this. He says it’s the banks because they're financing so much of this, too. Is he right? He said, look, it could be a really wonderful thing, or it could be a little concerning because of just the concentration at this point. Do you agree with him on that, or do you see other places in the economy right now that are driving this?
SOLOMON: Well, let's step back. You know, across the S&P, earnings growth in the S&P has been excellent across the S&P. One of the things, and my, you know, colleague John Waldron was on – was on – I think was on “Squawk” earlier this week, and he was talking about momentum and earnings growth. And so you've had really strong earnings growth across the S&P. There are a lot of things that are fueling the market. The economy is in very, very good shape. Is there a lot that's coming out of this enormous opportunity set? Absolutely. I'll go back to what I said. Whenever you have an acceleration like this that brings together in the capital markets lots of capital, the markets don't get it exactly right. There'll be capital allocated to things that don't work perfectly. But the capital markets also sort it out, and you know, they sort it out relatively effectively. I'm excited about this opportunity to look forward. I'm not smart enough to tell you what's going to happen in the markets next week, next month, you know, three months from now, but when I think about 3, 5, 7 years from now, the productivity gains in the economy, the way the U.S. is positioned in the world, the opportunity for real economic growth and acceleration of economic growth as this technology gets deployed in the economy is enormous. And we're going to see that filter through. And it won't be a straight line, but we're going to wake up a decade from now, and those benefits are going to be real. And I think it's a very exciting time because of that. You know, it's our job to play a role in trying to, you know, for lack of a better term, intermediate that as either asset managers or participants in the capital markets. But there's a lot to be optimistic about when you look forward.
HUANG: And this is going to impact literally every single trade, and the reason for that is because, at first principles, we are going through a platform shift in computing. There's not one industry, there's not one company that's not impacted fundamentally by computing. Of course, we're talking about artificial intelligence, the digitalization of intelligence. There's not one company, one industry, one person that is not affected by intelligence. And so, in every single way, when you say every – every company, every industry is affected by the AI trade, it is not surprising. And on first principles, it makes perfect sense.
SOLOMON: Yeah, and there will be – there will be winners and losers. I mean, there are going to be big companies, just as there have been in other super technology cycles. There'll be big companies that win. There'll be big companies that turn out to be not what people expected. That's part of the capital markets. One of the things that makes the U.S. so exceptional is that people, Americans, want to invest in the market. They want to take risk. Okay, and that's one of the things that makes our capital markets so special. And so, of course, it's not going to be perfect, and there can be people on either side of the trade. But I'm looking out 3, 5, 7, 10 years, and I'm very optimistic about what this can bring to productivity in the economy and how that ultimately will bring everybody along.
ZELTER: And I would just add, you know, David is right. In the end of the day, it's about revenue and cash flow. That's really what matters, and certainly Nvidia has proven that. But in our 42 years, U.S. economy has gone –
SOLOMON: – we are the same age.
ZELTER: – from 3 trillion to 33 trillion. I believe that growth is going to probably be accelerated in the next two decades. And if you believe that, there will be winners and losers. So Steve is right in the sense that there will be winners and losers, but this is – accelerates the global economy like we've not seen.
QUICK: Hey, Larry –
SZLEZAK: And also just one thing –
QUICK: Sure.
SZLEZAK: If you think about it, Becky, enterprises are never early adopters, right? Today, AI is mostly consumer-driven applications, right? Just put a prompt, comes out. In agentic AI, I think the use cases will just be profound. And I think, as Jensen mentioned, this is not a vertical disruptor, it's a horizontal disruptor across everything. And that is really difficult to quantify. And I know that makes things a bit scary as an investor because you're trying to triangulate on risk and the scale of investment. But I mean, we're seeing in our portfolio companies, and what Bruce mentioned earlier, you're seeing that payout to be really magnified as we start deploying AI in a systematically, and still very early stages of that.
HUANG: And because it's multi-industry –
SZLEZAK: – exactly.
HUANG: – the fact that we have a platform that is fungible by all industries, it really de-risks the investment and makes this infrastructure much more investable.
SZLEZAK: Yeah.
QUICK: Larry, I want to get your perspective on this, too. In terms of you probably represent individual shareholders who want to get access to this too – it's been frustrating in some ways for them to get access because so many of the big companies have stayed private for so long. What does this mean? What does an opportunity like this mean for people who are looking at the retirement funds and how they get access to this?
FINK: Well, we're going to be doing both private financing and public financing for this across the board. We're going to be working with pension funds across the world. So I think the access to these types of bond issuance is going to be much larger, and so I think we're going to see a much broadening of participation, as David said, $9 trillion of money market funds. You know, this is going to be a very attractive opportunity to move away from a short-term money market return to a long-dated return. So I look at this as a real long-term opportunity. I actually see this as also an opportunity for those who are overinvested in equities. They are going to be moving into these – this asset class, too. So this is just going to be expanding the opportunity to invest in a high credit quality investment with long-term returns. The thing that I think we cannot escape, though, we need to make sure that not only this is good for America and good for our investors, we need to make sure that this is good for everybody. We need to make sure that we're broadening participation in AI. One way is investing in these AI securities. But importantly, it is important for all of us to explain why this is good for every community, and this is obviously a big conversation going on. In our own state, the governor put a moratorium on data centers –
QUICK: – in New York, right.
FINK: – and so, we need to make sure we're properly telling the story. And that we're telling the story and showing that this is going to be working. And I'm confident we're going to be able to show that this is working for more and more men and women in the trades. But we need to make sure that we're showing why this is not just a good investment opportunity, but it's a good opportunity for all of Americans.
GRAY: Becky, I would just add a couple of things. I agree strongly with what Larry has said. You know, there's all this negativity around AI, and yet we're going to have a blue-collar job boom coming from this. We're going to see advances in healthcare that people cannot imagine. I know you spend a lot of time in this area. But what AI can do with visualization and looking at – collating different information, pulling it together, it's going to radically change outcomes. It's going to make all sorts of individuals able to become entrepreneurs. It's critical for American national defense. There are all these things that have value. I'd also point out – I don't think it's a coincidence most of us here spend our time in private capital, because to build this out, the first few years there's no income. Once this gets stabilized, once these are yield-based products, then it's easier to sell them in the public markets. But having this robust private market here is super helpful, and then ultimately a lot of this will migrate. And by the way, we've seen in the evolution, companies here that didn't have great credit, you know, you look at a CoreWeave which Jensen backed early on, we did a bunch of financings. Today, their cost of borrowing has come down dramatically as they've gone public. As Anthropic and OpenAI get public, their cost of funding will come down. It starts with our private capital, which all of us are accessing, then we go to the public markets, and then this virtual cycle goes. I agree, not everything's going to work out. But this is powerful what it's going to mean for society and certainly markets.
QUICK: Bruce?
FLATT: The one thing I would just end with is that the power is what drives all of this.
QUICK: The access to energy?
FLATT: Yes, the access to energy. And we need to build more faster. And there is a financing system for power. Like it's not new what Jensen's doing with compute. It will – compute will get to where power is. There is –
QUICK: – but do you think –
FLATT: – but it physically has to get underwritten. And like we have 14 nuclear plants that we’re in various stages of construction today.
QUICK: Wow.
FLATT: And it will be another 40 –
QUICK: – with the finished pipeline –
FLATT: – with another 100 coming. Oh, there – we're going to get them done.
HUANG: And this is the first time in a long time that market-driven forces can build out the sustainable energy necessary around the world.
FLATT: – Becky –
HUANG: – this is incredible without –
QUICK: – so you don’t need – you don’t need government funding?
HUANG: – without government funding. This is all –
FLATT: – we’re – this all –
HUANG: – all market-driven.
FLATT: – we're building these ourselves, and they're going to get built all across the United States. And remember, we bought Westmoreland out of bankruptcy seven years ago. Nobody was building a nuclear plant, and there's going – there’s a renaissance going on today in the United States, led by Westinghouse, that is incredible, largely because it's carbon free, it's base load, and it's the next energy that's coming. Like today –
QUICK: – right.
FLATT: – today everyone's worried about today. But if they knew there was more coming, that's why it takes five years to build a plant. But if you know it's coming, you can consume more of your margin of safety of energy.
QUICK: So are these concerns about whether we can meet this demand overdone at this point? Do you think, Jensen, that from where you see things, the demand level and how we're building up around it, that it's going to be okay? It'll all work out?
HUANG: We're going to be constrained for some time, and pretty much across the board, from chips to memories to packaging, to systems, photonics, connectors, land, power, construction workers, the whole thing. The entire supply chain up and down. Behind me, upstream, all the way downstream. And this is happening at a time when AI has become useful because it's starting to do productive work, and it's happening all over all over the world, and AI tokens are profitable, incredibly profitable. When you have something profitable, everybody wants to make more of it.
QUICK: Yeah.
HUANG: Great demand, great profitability. The conditions are exactly right for the work that we're doing right now.
QUICK: Jensen, why these companies? And did you go to any partners who said no?
HUANG: No one said no. But this is the sixth premier – world's premier institutional financiers for infrastructure. This is the best of the best.
QUICK: What Jon said – that right now, you'll be less likely to have public capital that comes into this because a lot of these are companies that aren't making money yet. Is he right on that, or are there going to be big banks and others that kind of step up with this?
HUANG: I believe within months you're going to realize that these companies are extremely profitable. These are the fastest growing technology companies in history.
QUICK: Your customers, you mean?
HUANG: That's right. These are fastest growing technology companies in history, and the tokens they're generating are incredibly profitable. You know, if the wafers that we buy from TSMC are incredibly profitable, there's incredible demand for it, I'm going to want to buy a lot more.
QUICK: By the way, who are we talking about? Your customers? Which customers will have access to these?
HUANG: AI labs. AI labs.
QUICK: AI labs are the ones –
HUANG: Yeah.
QUICK: – that's the ones that you think are profitable, but this – will this financing –
HUANG: – AI labs, AI startups. You know, as you know, this last six months, the world put in about $500 billion in AI startups. $500 billion – the largest investing period probably in recent history. And these companies need compute, and so we now have the vehicle to do so.
QUICK: When will we see the first deals?
HUANG: Well, it's up to these guys. They’ve – we've got to, you know,
QUICK: – anybody got one in the hopper right now?
HUANG: We've got to really hustle.
ZELTER: There's plenty in the hopper.
FLATT: It sounds like yesterday.
ZELTER: Yeah, I think there's plenty in the hopper.
SOLOMON: Plenty in the hopper.
HUANG: The demand's not the issue. Now we got to hustle and get our – get all of our agreements done.
QUICK: Okay. Well, folks, I want to thank you very much, all of you, for joining us today. This is very big news. It's the first time we've had the opportunity to sit down with a group of people who are actually the money, the financing behind these deals. And Jensen to get your insights to what's happening with this, too. You said in the next few months you think that we will see that these companies are profitable – the AI labs?
HUANG: Well, when they go public, it's going to be the biggest IPOs in history. Yeah.
QUICK: Okay. Well, we appreciate all of your time today. Thank you, and Larry, thank you for joining us remotely. We really appreciate your time today, gentlemen.
For more information contact:
Erin Kitzie
CNBC
