Nvidia's 'circular deal' pattern draws renewed scrutiny
Reporting from late July has revived concerns first raised in 2025 about Nvidia funding the same customers it depends on for chip demand. Critics cited in the Seoul Economic Daily's July 28 piece describe a pattern in which Nvidia payment guarantees and chip purchase commitments effectively route money back to its own order book, increasing the industry's exposure if AI investment slows.
OpenAI payment guarantees and separate chip contract
The Wall Street Journal reported on July 26 that Nvidia is discussing providing $250 billion in payment guarantees to help OpenAI lease data centers, including a 10-gigawatt hub under development in Ohio by a SoftBank subsidiary as part of the Stargate project. Separately, Nvidia is reportedly in talks for an additional roughly $350 billion contract so OpenAI can purchase its semiconductors. The WSJ characterization frames the second arrangement as a typical circular financing structure, a view OpenAI's reported outreach to Nvidia is attributed to its difficulties raising capital as a private company.
SK Group letter of intent and Korean AI factory build-out
On July 24, Nvidia signed a comprehensive letter of intent with SK Group covering more than $500 billion in AI factory construction and memory chip supply, announced at the San Francisco AI Summit. SK Telecom plans to deploy Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin system equipped with SK hynix's sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4), with phased high-performance AI factories in Korea beginning next year. Nvidia, in turn, would receive a stable supply of next-generation AI memory chips from SK hynix. Wall Street participants cited by the Seoul Economic Daily characterize this cooperation as another form of circular transaction.
Safe Superintelligence gains Vera Rubin access
SiliconANGLE reported on July 27 that Safe Superintelligence Inc., founded by Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Levy and Daniel Gross, secured access to Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPUs, raising the lab's available compute "by an order of magnitude." The deal is valued at multiple billions of dollars and includes an Nvidia investment made after gaining rare access to SSI's research. Sutskever told Bloomberg the lab's "big bet on the Vera Rubin platform will take us to the next level." Nvidia said it will also collaborate with SSI on current and future compute platforms, citing the lab's "unique insights on the future of AI." SSI has previously raised more than $7 billion at a $32 billion valuation, with Nvidia, Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Sequoia and GV among backers.
Market position shifts amid scrutiny
The Seoul Economic Daily notes that, in tandem with the renewed scrutiny, Nvidia ceded its top market capitalization position to Apple after roughly a year, underscoring the market sensitivity surrounding the circular-deal narrative.
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