NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), the dominant producer of artificial intelligence processors, is pursuing more than $750 billion of new and potential AI agreements as the company accelerates its investments across the global computing ecosystem. A partnership announced with SK Group (HXSCL), a South Korean conglomerate whose Hynix unit supplies memory chips, is expected to generate more than $500 billion of business between the two companies. NVIDIA is also discussing a potential financing arrangement that could help OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, lease computing capacity from a large U.S. data center project. These agreements may support further demand for NVIDIA’s processors, although investors have raised concerns that the company is increasingly financing businesses and infrastructure projects that are also major customers of its chips.
Under the SK Group agreement, the companies plan to develop more than 2 gigawatts of AI data centers on the Korean Peninsula, representing roughly enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes. The first AI factory, which will be built by SK Telecom, a South Korean telecommunications company, is expected to open next year. NVIDIA will also work with SK Hynix, a major producer of memory chips, to develop future high-bandwidth memory products, potentially improving NVIDIA’s access to components that remain in short supply because of expanding AI data center construction. NVIDIA separately agreed to invest $1 billion in Naver, a South Korean internet and cloud services provider, to support an AI data center being developed with Brookfield, a U.S. private equity firm. The investment is expected to allow Naver to more than triple the size of the facility, which will use NVIDIA’s AI computing hardware, while Naver’s shares increased more than 8% in Seoul following the announcement.
NVIDIA is also considering a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to help OpenAI lease a proposed $500 billion, 10-gigawatt data center hub being developed in Ohio by a subsidiary of SoftBank Group (SOBKY), a Japanese technology investment company. The chipmaker is separately discussing financing approximately $350 billion of OpenAI’s purchases of NVIDIA processors for the project, although the negotiations remain preliminary and could change or collapse. Investors may view the arrangement as another indication of strong long-term demand for AI infrastructure, but it could also increase NVIDIA’s exposure if spending slows or customers struggle to generate sufficient returns from their investments.
NVIDIA shares declined as much as 5.3% to $195.92 in New York trading on Monday, while the annual cost of protecting its debt against default rose by as much as approximately 0.14 percentage point to around 0.82 percentage point. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has rejected claims that NVIDIA’s agreements create circular demand, arguing that the company’s investments represent only a small portion of the money its customers ultimately need to raise.