The sudden resignation of Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, has plunged this chip giant's ambitious AI financing plan into even greater uncertainty. This $500 billion AI computing infrastructure financing platform, which was personally led by Jensen Huang and jointly created with six major Wall Street asset management giants, faced numerous problems even before his departure, and now its prospects have become even more murky.

According to a report by Bloomberg on November 13, sources familiar with the matter revealed that after failing to facilitate any transactions in the past few months, NVIDIA has been under pressure from some customers and Wall Street partners over the past month to increase the financing guarantee ratio. NVIDIA currently promises to provide a "residual value support agreement" up to 25% of the transaction size, which is lower than the level of its competitor Broadcom ( Broadcom ). This gap is considered one of the key factors hindering the completion of transactions. According to one of these sources, NVIDIA may not announce any transactions until January next year at the earliest.

Jensen Huang's departure has made the situation even more complicated. According to an article from Wall Street Journal, NVIDIA announced on Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as the interim CEO, while Jensen Huang will completely sever ties with the company. During Jensen Huang's thirty-year tenure at NVIDIA, he was a key figure in driving the development of this financing platform, and his departure raises questions about whether the project can continue.

Wall Street Alliance: From High-Point Moments to Trading Stagnation

The starting point of this financing platform was a symbolically significant scene in August of this year. Jensen Huang, dressed in his iconic jacket, appeared alongside executives from Apollo Global Management, BlackRock (BlackRock), Blackstone (Blackstone), Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs (Goldman Sachs), and KKR in front of television cameras. Together, they announced the establishment of a platform aimed at providing collective financing for AI's transaction calculations, with a target scale of up to 500 billion US dollars.

However, according to Bloomberg, behind this high-profile announcement, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Apollo had been working on these debt transactions for several months without achieving any results. Jensen Huang spoke highly of this $500 billion plan in public, partly to boost the confidence of their client base—these clients are the core support for NVIDIA's future demand. This boost came at just the right time: just a few weeks before the announcement, a hedge fund focused on the AI sector, Situational Awareness, had just suffered significant losses, and the shockwaves spread to technology stocks and chip stocks.

Now, several months have passed since that high-profile debut, and the platform has yet to facilitate a single transaction.

The Debate over the Minimum Guarantee Ratio: The Gap Between NVIDIA and Broadcom

The core mechanism of this financing model lies in the "Residual Value Support Agreement." Typically, companies establish special purpose vehicles to borrow funds to purchase chips, which are then leased to customers for use. The value of these special purpose entities comes from the cash flows generated by the lease agreements, as well as the residual value of the chips themselves.

Due to lenders' concerns that AI companies, which continue to burn through funds, may default, the backup support provided by chip manufacturers is crucial for attracting lenders. The logic of this mechanism is as follows: once lease payments are interrupted, the relevant assets will be re-leased or sold to repay the remaining debt; if there is still a shortfall, the backup party will cover the difference. This mechanism not only attracts more lenders to participate but also helps to obtain a higher credit rating, thereby reducing financing costs.

Broadcom has taken the lead in implementing such transactions through its “AI XPV” platform, which was jointly established with Apollo and Blackstone in June of this year. In May of this year, Broadcom provided a guarantee for $30 billion of a $35 billion debt transaction, supporting Anthropic in leasing tensor processing unit (TPU) chips jointly produced by Broadcom and Google’s Alphabet. The portion that received guarantee support obtained an investment-grade rating and a lower interest rate. According to Broadcom’s 8-K filing submitted on October 26, 2026, Broadcom will also provide 72.5% (about $43 billion) of guarantee support for another $63 billion transaction, which also serves Anthropic.

In contrast, NVIDIA only promises to provide a guarantee of 25%. According to reports, insiders stated that this gap makes it more difficult for NVIDIA to advance its transaction arrangements, especially when there are competitive transactions in the market with more favorable terms.

For NVIDIA, increasing the guarantee ratio comes at a cost. If NVIDIA insists on maintaining a cap of 25%, its chips will be more difficult for AI and cloud computing customers to afford, and its attractiveness to lenders will also decrease; however, raising the guarantee ratio means taking on more risks, which also contradicts its initial intention of using third-party funds to drive the expansion of AI infrastructure.

The report states that the design logic of this platform is to leverage external capital in order to drive the next round of growth in AI computing power investment, rather than for NVIDIA to bear too much risk on its own balance sheet.

Jensen Huang departs: The platform loses its key driving force

During the thirty years that Jensen Huang led NVIDIA, he was the company's sole CEO. Under his leadership, NVIDIA was referred to as the "central bank of AI," establishing confidence in this still nascent industry by holding shares throughout the AI ecosystem and providing backing support.

This role was most prominently reflected in the financing platform's announcement in August. However, with Jensen Huang being forced to step down due to a scandal involving an extramarital affair, the platform's progress lost its most crucial driving force.

Colette Kress has taken over as the interim CEO, but the problems NVIDIA is facing are not just about personnel changes. According to reports, it is still unknown whether Jensen Huang's departure will cause related transactions to go awry or even bring the entire project to a standstill. What is certain is that the next force to boost market confidence will have to come from outside of Jensen Huang.