News linked to both this project and an event.
According to TechFlow Research, a Bank of America research report on August 10 pointed out that NVIDIA signed a memorandum of understanding with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion in third-party capital through an independent platform. Previously, NVIDIA invested approximately $70 billion in equity in ecosystem partners such as OpenAI and Anthropic, accounting for only 15% of the expected free cash flow of $470 billion from 2026 to 2027, without affecting the commitment to return 50% of free cash flow to shareholders. Bank of America believes the financing structure shifts the capital burden from NVIDIA to the consortium. GPU computing power can be transferred across operators, and CUDA extends the service life, with the asset quality itself resisting depreciation. The $500 billion fund pool allows non-investment grade buyers to acquire GPUs at preferential rates, transforming AI computing power acquisition from capital-intensive purchases to financial leasing, supporting the $1.7 trillion AI system TAM by 2030. Bank of America maintains a Buy rating with a target price of $350, corresponding to 26 times the expected earnings per share in 2027. The upcoming earnings conference call is the next important catalyst.
NVIDIA announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to establish an independent financing platform. The platform aims to mobilize over $500 billion in third-party capital over the long term to support AI infrastructure development.
According to River AI's announcement, River AI, founded by xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, has completed a $1.1 billion financing round led by General Catalyst and AMP, with strategic investment from NVIDIA and AMD. Other investors include Y Combinator and Temasek.
"White-Haired Stock God" Serenity posted on X, stating that Unitree Technology's IPO has seen over 8,000x oversubscription from retail investors, reflecting an "extremely huge" market demand for pure humanoid robot companies. Serenity currently holds a bullish view on investment opportunities related to the U.S. humanoid robot company Agility Robotics, a project backed by SoftBank, NVIDIA ($NVDA), Amazon ($AMZN), Foxconn, and others, with a pre-money valuation of approximately $2.5 billion.Serenity stated that Unitree Technology's perpetual contract market valuation before its IPO already indicated relatively high expectations. If the company's market cap exceeds $30 billion after listing, it could further boost market attention on leading U.S. humanoid robot companies in the next one to two weeks. Regardless of the final outcome, the market demand demonstrated by Unitree's IPO is "truly astonishing," and the humanoid robot sector is emerging as a new hotspot for global capital attention.
According to Yonhap News, Naver D2SF announced the completion of a follow-on investment in physical AI data startup NdotLight (엔닷라이트). This round of financing was led by the Korea Development Bank, with a total size of 15 billion Korean won. This is also Naver D2SF's third investment in the company following the Pre-A round in 2021 and the Series A round in 2022. NdotLight independently developed the 3D data generation solution TRINIX, which can automatically generate high-precision 3D data containing physical properties (mass, friction), joint structures, and collision range information, and is deeply integrated with NVIDIA's simulation platform Omniverse, achieving mass supply of large-scale high-quality 3D simulation datasets.
According to CNBC, Nvidia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to jointly establish a financing platform for Nvidia customers, aiming to mobilize over $500 billion in third-party capital for hyperscale data center construction and Nvidia hardware procurement. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang characterized this as the first time AI chips have become an "investable asset class," stating they possess revenue-generating capabilities, long service lives, and can be transferred across customers, while analogizing compute infrastructure to electricity and the internet. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink defined the project as the "next future of financial engineering" following the securitization of mortgages in the 1970s, and stated that more funds would be raised as soon as possible. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon revealed that this collaboration was initiated by Jensen Huang. Currently, some funds have already been raised; the parties will provide financing support for GPUs and data centers through institutional credit, insurance capital, and private capital, helping end users complete AI infrastructure construction without tapping their own balance sheets.
NVIDIA plans to invest up to $3 billion in power infrastructure developer Lancium, with an initial investment of $2 billion to acquire approximately 20% equity, and an additional $1 billion may be added subsequently if milestones such as grid connection are met. Lancium is backed by Blackstone Group, and its "Clean Campus" located in Abilene, Texas is the site of the first phase of NVIDIA's "Stargate" AI supercomputing data center project. The company is currently valued at approximately $10 billion and is evaluating an IPO in 2027.
Odaily News, data from BofA Global Research shows that as of now, global AI-related funding in 2026 has reached $344 billion, compared to just $136 billion for the entire year of 2025. Of this, $157 billion came from U.S. dollar-denominated hyperscale cloud providers, $62 billion from non-U.S. dollar-denominated cloud providers, $51 billion was directed toward data center projects, $50 billion was tied to NVIDIA and SpaceX, and another $23 billion flowed into the chip sector.
According to Reuters, Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus completed a $2 billion equity financing, pushing its post-money valuation to over $10.5 billion, nearly doubling the $5.5 billion valuation from its previous funding round in April. The round saw continued participation from NVIDIA and Coatue Management, with funds under Blackstone and Jane Street also providing support.
Odaily News: AI research startup Mirendil has entered into a multi-year partnership agreement with Google Cloud to secure large-scale computing resources in support of its "Self-Improving AI" research and development. Under the agreement, Mirendil will gain access to TPU and NVIDIA GPU computing resources provided by Google Cloud, as well as managed AI training clusters, to develop AI systems capable of continuously optimizing their own capabilities. It is reported that Mirendil is focused on advancing "Recursive Self-Improvement" AI, in which AI systems enhance their own performance through iterative refinement, self-learning, and optimization. This direction is also a research area of interest among some of the top AI laboratories today.Benham Neyshabur, co-founder and CEO of Mirendil, revealed that the total value of the agreement exceeds $100 million, roughly equivalent to half of the $1 billion valuation seed funding round the company completed at the end of June. (TechCrunch)
According to Bloomberg, AI cloud infrastructure company Volta Infra Holdings announced the completion of $300 million in venture financing, achieving a valuation of $2.4 billion, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with participation from NVIDIA and Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies. Additionally, Volta secured support from a $5 billion customer financing pool designed to help small and medium-sized AI enterprises lower the barrier to purchasing NVIDIA high-end chips. The company also disclosed it has signed a $10 billion, six-year cloud computing service contract with an unnamed leading AI developer. The contract will be fulfilled in partnership with Bitdeer, delivered via its 133 MW data center in Norway. Volta was co-founded earlier this year by former Brookfield Asset Management infrastructure executives Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio. It has currently secured 1 GW of data center power resources and plans to develop new sites in Texas and Wyoming, aiming to deploy multi-gigawatt compute capacity before 2030.
Odaily Odaily News: AI voice generation startup Fish Audio announced the completion of a $52 million seed funding round, led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today, with participation from 359 Capital, Parable, Play Time, and other institutions. The company was founded by former NVIDIA researcher Shijia Liao, who initially trained the first voice generation model on a single GPU and open-sourced it out of dissatisfaction with the lack of expressiveness in AI-generated voices on the market. Over the past year, Fish Audio has launched five models, including four voice generation models and one speech-to-text model. (TechCrunch)
According to Chaoxiang Research, UBS released a SemiBytes Flash Note on July 20, 2026, judging that the semiconductor sector is transitioning from a broad-based rally to a phase of severe divergence, while the AI-themed crowded trade continues. The report covers five core topics. The release of Kimi K3 drives another upgrade in open-source model scale; longer context windows boost demand for HBM and storage, with NVIDIA being the biggest beneficiary. Micron's cumulative free cash flow over the next few years is expected to exceed $400 billion; after the buyback ban is lifted, the theoretical buyback ratio could exceed 40%, which is not yet fully priced in by the market. Divergence within the analog chip sector is intensifying; stocks with higher AI exposure have gained a 42x P/E premium, while valuations for stocks with automotive and industrial exposure remain near historical averages. Position crowding data shows that Lam Research, Broadcom, Seagate, Micron, and AMD remain in a state of extreme long positioning crowding.
According to Bloomberg, UK startup CuspAI, founded just two years ago, has raised nearly $500 million, with its core bet being the use of artificial intelligence to improve semiconductor production processes. On Monday, CuspAI announced the establishment of the "AI Materials Foundry," an alliance that brings together more than 48 tech companies, industrial companies, and research institutions, with members including NVIDIA, Meta, and Hyundai Motor Group.
According to TechFlow Research, Goldman Sachs' July 16 energy storage report pointed out that electricity demand from data centers is surging, traditional grid expansion requires four to eight years, and energy storage has become the fastest solution with a 12 to 18-month deployment cycle. Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030, behind-the-meter energy storage opportunities in the US will bring about 50GWh of increment, plus 11GWh from 800V DC data centers, total US energy storage deployment will reach 172GWh, significantly upwardly revised from the previous 112GWh. Globally, annual energy storage installations are expected to reach 2100GWh by 2040. Goldman Sachs believes energy storage is transitioning from renewable energy supporting equipment to a necessity for AI infrastructure, which will change the industry valuation logic. In terms of targets, FLNC (Buy) secured exclusive battery partner qualification for Nvidia DSX Vera Rubin, data center pipeline projects reached 12GW, up 30% sequentially; CATL (Buy) has about 30% global energy storage market share, already used in Shanghai SenseTime data center; Tesla (Neutral) 2025 energy storage deployment 46.7GWh, energy business 2028 estimated revenue 29 billion USD; Energy Vault (Neutral) received 6x EV/EBITDA valuation; LGES (Buy) North America ESS capacity expected to reach 50GWh by end of 2026. Canadian Solar, Ford, Samsung SDI, Shoals, Sungrow are also worth watching. Goldman Sachs emphasizes the need to distinguish those with real order support
AI infrastructure startup Fireworks AI has announced the completion of a $1.5 billion financing round, valuing the company at $17.5 billion. The company, previously backed by NVIDIA, primarily provides developers with cloud-based services for running open-source AI models, helping enterprises deploy AI applications at lower costs. This funding round was led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV, with participation from NVIDIA, Evantic, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. Currently, Fireworks processes approximately 40 trillion AI tokens daily. Its clients include companies such as Elastic, GitLab, and MongoDB. Previously, over half of its revenue came from the AI coding tool Cursor, but its client base has since become more diversified. (CNBC)
Odaily reports, as the value of the artificial intelligence industry rapidly increases, political and tech circles in the United States have begun discussing how to share the immense wealth generated by AI with the public. A series of proposals all point in the same direction: having the government or public institutions hold equity in AI companies.Recently, Sam Altman discussed the possibility of granting the U.S. government or other public entities partial ownership in OpenAI. Meanwhile, the U.S. government already holds approximately 10% of Intel's shares, and it has indicated it may receive a certain percentage of revenue from NVIDIA's chip sales to China.U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed that major AI laboratories contribute half of their shares to a new sovereign wealth fund, allowing the public to share in the growth dividends of the AI industry.Observers suggest that these plans essentially aim to redistribute some of the economic benefits from AI development back to society. However, critics point out that most current proposals boil down to one model: having the government hold equity in AI companies.Supporters argue that AI could become the most significant productivity transformation in the coming decades, and involving the government in revenue distribution could alleviate wealth concentration. Opponents, however, worry that direct government ownership of stakes in tech companies could impact market competition, corporate governance, and innovation incentives.As the valuation of the AI industry continues to rise, how to distribute the economic benefits generated by artificial intelligence is becoming a core topic of debate among U.S. policymakers and the tech industry. (The Information)
According to TechFlow Research, Morgan Stanley's July 13 roadshow feedback report points out that Nvidia's current biggest problem is not fundamentals, but the market capitalization size leading to a lack of incremental capital. Quarterly growth is 95% and management believes growth will accelerate; next year's free cash flow yield will exceed 5%, with over half potentially returned to shareholders, so value investors may become the new buying force. Morgan Stanley also focuses on Nvidia's NeoCloud financing support model, providing credit endorsement for cloud service providers in exchange for revenue sharing, creating a recurring revenue stream with 100% gross margin beyond hardware. Morgan Stanley maintains an Overweight rating on Nvidia with a target price of $288.
Gradium, a Paris-based real-time voice AI startup, has announced the completion of a $100 million seed funding round, with NVIDIA participating as an investor.The company has recently rapidly launched multiple voice AI products, covering tools such as real-time speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), real-time translation (Gradium Translate), and the Phonon audio model. The funding will be used to establish a new office in San Francisco, deeply integrate with the North American AI industry ecosystem, and accelerate the recruitment of global technical talent. Gradium specializes in ultra-low-latency real-time voice interaction models, spun out of the French AI lab Kyutai, with its founding team hailing from top AI institutions such as Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta.
According to TechFlow Research, Bank of America reaffirmed its Buy rating for NVIDIA in a July 7 research report, with a price target of $350 versus the current $195.55, implying 79% upside. NVIDIA is currently trading at 15.7x expected 2027 P/E ratio, the lowest in seven years, representing a 30-35% discount to tech peers. BofA believes the market has overestimated risks such as HBM cost pressure and custom ASIC competition. Vera Rubin inference performance per watt is 10x higher than Blackwell, and gross margin is expected to remain at 75%. NVIDIA's sales to hyperscale customers increased 115% year-over-year, nearly twice the growth rate of cloud capex. Crowded positioning and $65 billion in ecosystem investment are risks but have been priced into the valuation.