Nvidia Backs Nscale GPU Debt as Big Tech AI Capex Nears $650B for 2026

Nvidia is stepping in to guarantee a portion of a $1.4 billion ($1.4B) debt financing package arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for UK-based AI cloud provider Nscale, marking a new structure in neocloud GPU financing as combined 2026 capital expenditures across the four largest U.S. hyperscalers approach $650 billion ($650B) (Mint / Bloomberg).

According to Bloomberg reporting published Friday, Oct. 30, Nscale—which separated from an Australian cryptocurrency mining operation in 2024 and was valued at $14.6 billion in a recent $2 billion funding round backed by Nvidia—is borrowing $1.4 billion to purchase roughly 40,000 Nvidia processors for a data center in Glomfjord, Norway that it will lease to Microsoft Corp. Under the two-tranche loan structure, Nvidia is backstopping a $770 million tranche carrying an interest rate of about 6.5% by agreeing to lease the chips itself and remarket the capacity if Nscale fails to meet lease payments after data center construction is finished. A second, unguaranteed tranche carries an interest rate of roughly 8.25%.

Nvidia previously committed a $3.2 billion backstop to CoreWeave Inc. in 2023 and entered a $1.5 billion lease guarantee with Lambda last year, and disclosed more than $26 billion in total multi-year cloud capacity commitments across its partner ecosystem.

Blackstone Projects Double-B Post-IPO Credit Rating for Anthropic

In a separate look at AI credit markets, the Financial Times and TechCrunch reported Friday that Blackstone—the anchor investor in a recent $63 billion financing deal for Anthropic's AI chips—told participating investors it expects credit rating agencies to assign Anthropic a rating in the double-B range, the top tier of speculative or "high junk" debt, following the company's initial public offering (TechCrunch). Anthropic officially filed to go public earlier this week, and Blackstone had previously projected that the Claude developer would reach an investment-grade rating before 2027.

Big Tech Capex Projected at $650 Billion as Intel Shares Fall 28%

The structured debt deals arrive as Wall Street scrutinizes surging capital budgets across Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, which are projected to spend a combined $650 billion on capital expenditures in 2026—up roughly 70% from 2025, when the four companies generated $200 billion in combined free cash flow (Rest of World). Following this week's quarterly earnings reports, Microsoft shares fell 10% and Meta declined 8% on Wednesday before Amazon dropped 9% on Thursday after guiding toward $200 billion in annual infrastructure spending.

Meanwhile, Intel Corp. shares fell 28% on Friday—reducing the paper value of the U.S. government's 10% equity stake by $12 billion—after CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned that rising memory and component costs are pressuring PC buyers (TechCrunch). Intel guided fourth-quarter (Q4) revenue to between $15 billion ($15B) and $16 billion ($16B) (below analyst expectations of roughly $17 billion) and projected gross profit margins would narrow from 43% to 37%, even as revenue in Intel's data center unit rose 78% year-over-year.