Jensen Huang Urges Wall Street to Treat AI Compute as Asset

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asserted on Monday that AI computing hardware should be treated by Wall Street as an investable infrastructure asset class. He characterized AI compute as a productive, revenue-generating asset that is "fungible, durable and highly rentable."

This push for a new financial classification follows data from the Ornn Exchange Compute Price Index, which showed that rental prices for three-year-old H100 GPUs rose 22% in a single month to $3.28 per hour. This price increase defies traditional hardware depreciation models, where value typically drops rapidly over time.

To implement this strategy, Nvidia announced partnerships in August with major financial firms, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Apollo Global Management. These collaborations aim to mobilize over $500 billion in financing for AI infrastructure. Despite Huang's optimism, some analysts warn that the market could eventually face a price war if China's growing domestic AI capacity floods the market with cheaper chips.