Nvidia's own credit market flinched at its $750bn AI deal spree
Nvidia is working on a fresh round of AI infrastructure deals potentially worth more than $750bn, per Bloomberg. It includes a $500bn+ initiative with SK Group (parent of SK Hynix) to build 2GW+ of data centres on the Korean Peninsula. In response, Nvidia's five-year credit-default-swap spread surged to a record 82 basis points on Monday; the largest single-day intraday jump since the contract began trading in November 2025. The concern is structural: Nvidia takes stakes in or guarantees debt for customers like OpenAI and CoreWeave, who then spend that money on Nvidia hardware. Jensen Huang calls the circularity charge 'ridiculous'.
What it actually means
The money under your entire stack is now being financed in a loop i.e. Nvidia backs the customers who then spend that money on Nvidia chips, and for the first time the debt market has put a price on the risk of it. The builder read isn't 'the bubble is popping'; nobody credible knows that. It's narrower and more useful: the cheap, heavily-subsidised compute you've quietly been designing around may not be a permanent feature of the world. Do stop assuming token prices only ever fall. Two practical moves: avoid architectures that only pencil out at today's financed-down prices, and keep a second provider you could actually switch to if one vendor's economics wobble.
The credit market just put a price on AI's circular financing.
82 bpsNvidia's 5-year CDS spread; a record high
Source: The Next Web (reporting Bloomberg / ICE Data) · Wednesday, 29 July 2026