Is NVIDIA Funding Its Own Stock Rally?
If you hold NVIDIA (NVDA) stock, one number deserves your attention: roughly a quarter. That is the share of fiscal 2028 business management expects from AI labs it will back with its own balance sheet. NVIDIA’s revenue more than doubled year over year in fiscal Q2 2027, so this number is easy to miss. An important thing to watch is how much future demand depends on NVIDIA backing its own customers.
Why Does NVIDIA Put Its Own Money Behind Its Customers?
Here is how this kind of support works, as a made-up example. A chipmaker invests in a young customer. That customer then spends the money on the chipmaker’s products.
The sale is real, but the chipmaker’s own money sits on both sides of it. Management said in the fiscal Q2 2027 call that some will call NVIDIA’s support circular financing.
Management says a surge in AI demand is driving a global buildout of computing infrastructure. It also describes revenue-sharing deals with cloud partners.
Management says these deals matter because, over time, they can expand NVIDIA’s addressable market. They can also create a recurring revenue stream tied to usage. That explains why NVIDIA does it, but not how big the support has become.
How Big Has NVIDIA’s Support For Its Customers Become?
NVIDIA has already invested nearly $50 billion in frontier AI labs, according to management. For one more AI lab, it will provide credit support for nearly 2 gigawatts of computing capacity. With some cloud partners, it guarantees a minimum level of revenue on part of a facility’s capacity.
Those lab investments are part of a broader expansion: Business Insider reported that NVIDIA’s overall equity portfolio has reached $99 billion. In summer 2025, that portfolio was roughly $7 billion. That is a 14-fold increase, so this is not a mild change.
There is also a change in how quickly NVIDIA gets paid. Days of sales outstanding, the average time to collect cash after a sale, increased to 60 days. Management said this reflects extended payment terms for large purchases by certain investment-grade customers, shipped over multiple quarters. So some buyers with strong credit are taking longer to pay.
What Are You Paying For NVIDIA Stock Today?
NVIDIA stock trades at 28.1 times its past year’s earnings. The S&P 500 trades at 22.5 times. The multiple also sits in the bottom tenth of NVIDIA’s own 10-year range.
The price likely assumes that growth holds up and that the backed customers keep paying. Management points to the size of its customers’ commitments. OpenAI’s existing and planned commitments represent about 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA computing. OpenAI has committed to deployments through 2030. Whether those purchases rest on NVIDIA’s backing is worth watching.
NVIDIA’s own finances are also strong. Its debt is just 0.7% of its market value. For the S&P 500 as a whole, that figure is 21%, so NVIDIA carries far less debt.
Roughly a quarter of expected fiscal 2028 business comes from AI labs NVIDIA plans to back. That is a notable share, and it represents a key risk factor that investors should monitor. The worry would grow if that share climbs or collection times keep stretching. It would ease if more growth comes from customers paying their own way. NVIDIA’s next update comes at its fiscal Q3 2027 earnings call on November 17.
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