Nvidia is moving to reshape how the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom is financed, joining forces with six of the world’s largest asset managers and investment banks to mobilize more than $500 billion in capital for data centers, computing hardware and other AI infrastructure.

The chipmaker said Monday it had signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish financing platforms for companies seeking to expand their AI computing capacity.

The initiative could mark a significant shift in the economics of the AI boom. Instead of hyperscalers and AI developers funding the entire cost of data centers and Nvidia hardware through their own balance sheets, institutional investors, insurers and private-credit providers could increasingly finance the assets directly.

That would allow companies building AI infrastructure to accelerate deployment while limiting the amount of capital they need to raise themselves. This could also help to sustain demand for Nvidia’s processors by making them easier for customers to finance.

“This is really the first time that technology chips have become an investable asset class,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC. “These are revenue-generating assets now. They’re productive, they’re long-lived, they’re fungible, they’re flexible.”

The distinction weighs heavily because GPUs have traditionally been treated as technology equipment that depreciates rapidly as newer generations arrive. Nvidia is effectively arguing that the economics of AI computing have changed sufficiently for those chips to be treated more like infrastructure.

Huang compared AI computing with electricity and the internet, noting that computing capacity has become a fundamental input into the economy rather than simply another piece of corporate technology equipment.

“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 it’s infrastructure,” he said.

The proposed financing model rests on a critical assumption: that Nvidia GPUs can continue producing revenue for long enough to support long-duration financing.

Investors are expected to closely watch that assumption.

A new generation of AI processors can make older hardware less attractive, particularly for workloads requiring maximum performance. If the economic life of a GPU is materially shorter than the duration of the financing attached to it, lenders could face residual-value risk.

Nvidia’s argument is that its hardware is sufficiently widely deployed and transferable that computing capacity can retain economic value even as newer chips enter the market. That would make GPUs more comparable to other productive assets that generate cash flow over several years.

The initiative therefore represents more than another source of funding for data centers. It is an attempt to create a financial market around AI computing itself.

“We’re in a pivotal moment of a historic AI investment cycle,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said. “Our investment and distribution roles reflect our confidence in NVIDIA’s leadership, and we’re excited for the new opportunity to create a market for credit backed by NVIDIA compute.”

Solomon said Huang approached the major financial institutions with the idea.

Blackstone President Jon Gray said on CNBC that AI compute could eventually be viewed as a “financeable asset class” in much the same way mortgage lenders evaluate residential property.

The comparison goes further than a simple analogy. Infrastructure assets become attractive to institutional investors when they have identifiable cash flows, predictable utilization and long operating lives. Nvidia and its financial partners are attempting to establish those characteristics for computing capacity.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described the initiative as the beginning of a new phase of financial engineering, comparing its potential significance with the development of mortgage-backed securities.

“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,” Fink said.

The development is taking place as the AI industry is entering a period in which capital requirements are becoming enormous. Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers, chips, networking equipment and electricity infrastructure. AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are also requiring massive amounts of computing capacity to train and operate increasingly sophisticated models.

But the sheer scale of that spending has begun to raise questions about how much can safely remain on corporate balance sheets. Rating agencies have warned that unprecedented capital expenditure is putting pressure on free cash flow and encouraging major technology companies to rely more heavily on debt.

Analysts say that Nvidia’s financing initiative could help relieve that pressure by moving part of the investment burden to institutional capital. It could also deepen the connection between the semiconductor industry and private credit. Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield and KKR control or manage enormous pools of institutional and insurance capital and have been expanding their exposure to digital infrastructure.

Some have already financed AI companies and data-center projects, including transactions involving Anthropic.

The proposed structure could create a new layer of demand for Nvidia’s products. If customers can finance GPUs through specialized lending structures rather than relying entirely on cash flow or conventional corporate borrowing, the pool of potential buyers could expand.

That creates an important feedback loop.

More financing can support more GPU purchases. More GPU deployments can create more computing capacity. If that capacity generates sufficient revenue, the assets can service their financing, encouraging lenders to provide more capital for additional infrastructure.

But the same mechanism could amplify the downside if AI demand fails to meet expectations.

If model developers struggle to monetize their products, data-center utilization falls or hyperscalers reduce capital expenditure, lenders could find themselves financing assets whose expected cash flows no longer justify their valuations. The risk would then move from technology companies into the financial system.

That issue has become particularly relevant following the recent market debate over whether the AI investment boom is running ahead of the industry’s ability to generate returns. Nvidia’s proposal effectively addresses that concern by asking Wall Street to place a financial value on future AI cash flows.

YouTube is raising the requirements for creators to qualify for its main advertising revenue-sharing program, doubling the watch-time and Shorts-view thresholds and making it harder for smaller or less consistent creators to earn money from the platform.

The changes, announced Monday, are expected to take effect on February 1 and will primarily affect creators seeking to enter the advertising tier of the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP.

Creators already enrolled in the program will not be removed because of the new entry requirements.

“The biggest changes are on what it takes to earn from ads rev-share,” Amjad Hanif, YouTube’s vice president of creator product, said in a video outlining the changes.

For creators focused on conventional long-form videos, the amount of qualified watch time required over the previous 12 months will rise to 8,000 hours from 4,000. The subscriber requirement will remain at 1,000.

The increase means a creator will need to generate twice as much eligible viewing activity before qualifying for YouTube’s advertising revenue-sharing program. For creators who are still building an audience, that could significantly extend the time required to reach monetization.

The threshold is even more demanding for creators focused on YouTube Shorts.

Creators seeking to participate in Shorts advertising revenue sharing will need 20 million qualified Shorts views within a 90-day period, up from 10 million. They will also continue to need at least 1,000 subscribers.

More importantly, Shorts creators will have to maintain 10 million qualified views during each rolling 90-day period to continue earning through the Shorts program. A creator who falls below that level can lose access to Shorts monetization, although YouTube said the creator could still earn revenue from eligible long-form videos.

The change effectively shifts YouTube’s Shorts monetization model toward sustained performance rather than occasional viral success.

A creator who produces one video that attracts millions of views may no longer be able to rely on that spike alone. To remain eligible, creators will need to consistently generate substantial viewership over successive 90-day periods.

“We had a case where if you had only a few thousand views, you might have a few cents for that month,” Hanif said. “Instead, we’d like to design the program in a way where it rewards creators who are leaned in, who are driving views and engagement.”

That could make YouTube’s monetization system more attractive to established creators while increasing the pressure on smaller channels to publish consistently and maintain audience engagement.

The policy also underpins how dramatically YouTube’s creator economy has changed since the company last increased the long-form monetization threshold in 2018. YouTube now has about 3 million creators participating in its Partner Program. The platform has also had to adapt to the rapid growth of short-form video, a market transformed by TikTok and increasingly contested by Instagram Reels and other services.

YouTube introduced permanent revenue sharing for Shorts in 2023, giving creators a direct financial incentive to build audiences around short-form content. The format has since become a major component of the platform’s creator strategy. But Shorts also produce much more volatile viewing patterns than conventional videos. A creator can receive millions of views from a single viral clip and then see engagement collapse soon afterward.

YouTube’s decision to impose an ongoing performance requirement appears designed to address that volatility and direct monetization toward creators who can repeatedly generate meaningful engagement.

The higher thresholds could nevertheless create a tougher environment for smaller creators.

Austen Tosone, a creator who spoke to Business Insider, said the changes could make it “so much tougher for small creators,” noting that many creators already struggle to monetize long-form content.

YouTube’s approach to creator economics has broadly changed. The company said it is expanding monetization beyond traditional advertising revenue, introducing initiatives such as milestone-based incentive payments, shopping bonuses and additional earnings opportunities tied to creators starting and growing trends.

YouTube said it wants to diversify the ways creators make money rather than relying solely on advertising. That strategy is important because advertising revenue can be unpredictable, particularly for smaller channels. Expanding shopping, incentives, and other commercial tools could give YouTube more ways to retain creators even as it raises the bar for entry into ad revenue sharing.

With millions of creators already participating in YPP, a higher threshold allows the company to concentrate advertising revenue and other resources among channels that demonstrate sustained audience demand.

The new rules do not prevent creators from uploading videos or building audiences. They make the path from audience-building to advertising revenue longer and, particularly for Shorts creators, more dependent on sustained performance.