{ "generatedAt": "2026-10-22T04:12:33Z", "disclaimer": "Analysis and opinion, not investment advice.", "part": 16, "slug": "the-seller-holds-the-paper", "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/grid/", "api": "https://deepstack.ltd/api/v1/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/grid.json", "csv": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/grid.csv", "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/", "story": { "headline": "The Seller Holds the Paper", "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-seller-holds-the-paper/", "api": "https://deepstack.ltd/api/v1/stories/the-seller-holds-the-paper.json" }, "question": "How much of the money buying AI chips was lent, guaranteed or invested by the companies selling them?", "license": "DeepStack, https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/grid/; quotations under fair use, clipped to 250 characters; cite the canonical URL", "clip": 250, "count": 20, "claims": 37, "columns": [ { "id": "main", "question": "How much of the money buying AI chips was lent, guaranteed or invested by the companies selling them?", "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/" } ], "rows": [ { "name": "Clark Tang", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/clark-tang/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "On circularity fears: recent third-party capital from Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR was independently underwritten apart from one another and replaces Nvidia's balance sheet rather than merely extending it, which…", "date": "2026-08-12", "url": "https://taekim.substack.com/p/nvidia-is-speedrunning-the-creation" }, { "claim": "Hyperscalers retained one structural advantage over neoclouds: investment-grade balance sheets that let them fund speculative capacity ahead of demand and rent it out at higher spot rates, whereas neoclouds could only get financing for hardware…", "date": "2026-08-12", "url": "https://taekim.substack.com/p/nvidia-is-speedrunning-the-creation" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Daniel Nishball", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/daniel-nishball/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "They characterize Nvidia as acting like the central bank of AI, supplying support where the private lending system will not, because small buyers can pay for GPUs but cannot offer creditors a credit rating, and Nvidia does not want demand…", "date": "2026-07-06", "url": "https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nvidia-gpu-debt-backstop-unleashes" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Gaetano", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/gaetano/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "NVIDIA's non-traditional hyperscaler customers (neoclouds, sovereign AI clouds, enterprises, and industrial customers) generated 59% of data center growth this quarter and are expected to drive Q3 growth primarily, because they rely more heavily on…", "date": "2026-08-28", "url": "https://gaetanoresearch.substack.com/p/nvda-earnings-discussion" }, { "claim": "NVIDIA has invested approximately 50 billion dollars in AI labs and is working with firms like Blackstone and BlackRock to establish financing platforms targeting over 500 billion dollars of third-party infrastructure capital, with roughly…", "date": "2026-08-28", "url": "https://gaetanoresearch.substack.com/p/nvda-earnings-discussion" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Tae Kim", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/tae-kim/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "Tae Kim worried about the sequence of information releases: had news of a slowdown in Anthropic's ARR growth from share losses to OpenAI come out before OpenAI's higher ARR figure, it could have spooked markets; now that the $70 billion number is…", "date": "2026-10-02", "url": "https://taekim.substack.com/p/openais-undeniable-resurgence-and" }, { "claim": "Morgan Stanley's investor meetings with Nvidia leadership show accelerating growth rates even at 100 billion dollars revenue per quarter, strong demand for the Vera Rubin product cycle over the next 12 months, memory shortages lasting several…", "date": "2026-07-14", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "CoreWeave", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/companies/coreweave/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "Two examples of prior-generation demand: an AI-native scientific discovery company on NVIDIA A100s with a renewal term extending into 2029 and a 3-year contract signed in line with typical 1-year terms, and a leading early-stage research lab on…", "date": "2026-09-17", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "Longriver", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/longriver/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "Reported revenue acceleration at the two leading model companies — an annualised run-rate said to go from USD 1 billion at end-2024 to USD 9 billion at end-2025 to almost USD 50 billion in May this year at Anthropic, with a similar trajectory at…", "date": "2026-07-20", "url": "https://fiscal.ai/fund-letters/longriver-investment-partners-limited-q2-2026-fscl_document_8HDF9YVG683" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Market Sentiment", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/market-sentiment/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-loan-is-a-bridge", "label": "The loan is a bridge", "claims": [ { "claim": "The latest US AI lab models, GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1, are priced at $10/$50 per million tokens, a similar band to GPT-4 ($30/$60) and Opus 3 ($15/$75) at their respective releases, leading Market Sentiment to conclude there is a separate…", "date": "2026-09-08", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "Michael Burry", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/michael-burry/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-seller-funds-its-demand", "label": "The seller funds its demand", "claims": [ { "claim": "NVIDIA's revenue growth is only mostly real because circular financing sustains marginal AI compute demand above market-rate levels, and resolution of the power bottleneck will reduce revenue recurrence and compress the scarcity premium in margins…", "date": "2026-07-09", "url": "https://michaeljburry.substack.com/p/short-thoughts-july-8-2026-nvda-neos" }, { "claim": "Michael Burry characterises Nvidia's November 2025 defence that its strategic investments in customers were a minimal portion of revenue as evasive, because it referred only to revenue already booked rather than to future revenue.", "date": "2026-07-23", "url": "https://michaeljburry.substack.com/p/trading-post-july-23-2026-3-stock" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Kakashii", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/kakashii/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-seller-funds-its-demand", "label": "The seller funds its demand", "claims": [ { "claim": "CoreWeave exists primarily to generate demand for Nvidia's GPUs, as evidenced by the fact that Nvidia is the sole GPU supplier and also an investor, customer, strategic sponsor, and that cash equipment purchases alone equaled approximately 84…", "date": "2026-08-20", "url": "https://kakashiii111.substack.com/p/the-nvidia-spv-series-part-2-coreweave" }, { "claim": "Nvidia, acting as supplier, investor, financier, and deal broker, introduced Nebius to four major customers worth over $1 billion each in Q1, demonstrating Nebius's dependence on Nvidia for customer acquisition.", "date": "2026-08-25", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "Distillate Capital Partners LLC", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/distillate-capital-partners-llc/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-seller-funds-its-demand", "label": "The seller funds its demand", "claims": [ { "claim": "Circular financing distorts the picture: hyperscalers and NVIDIA have committed roughly $180 billion to OpenAI and Anthropic, which pledge about $1.1 trillion of compute spending back to them against far smaller revenues, and $53 billion of…", "date": "2026-07-15", "url": "https://fiscal.ai/fund-letters/distillate-capital-partners-llc-q2-2026-fscl_document_3BZX2NEX647" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Steve Eisman", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/steve-eisman/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-seller-funds-its-demand", "label": "The seller funds its demand", "claims": [ { "claim": "Steve raises the concern that Nvidia had an insane quarter yet seventy percent of its receivables come from five accounts, and that much of the food chain depends on the health of Anthropic and OpenAI.", "date": "2026-09-28", "url": "https://realeismanplaybook.substack.com/p/what-the-ai-boom-looks-like-from" }, { "claim": "The AI trade's foundations are shaky because roughly seventy percent of the hyperscalers' AI revenue traces back to just two customers, OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which are burning enormous amounts of cash, so if either stumbles the entire…", "date": "2026-09-21", "url": null } ] }, { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "NVIDIA's revenue growth is concentrated among a small number of customers, with one customer accounting for 16% of quarterly revenue and five customers making up 70% of accounts receivable.", "date": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://realeismanplaybook.substack.com/p/inside-ais-fragile-ecosystem-with" }, { "claim": "The visible, Nvidia-funded circular financing in AI (Nvidia investing in or lending to companies that then buy Nvidia chips) is out in the open and funded from Nvidia's own cash flow, and is not what disturbs the speaker; what disturbs him is the…", "date": "2026-09-25", "url": "https://realeismanplaybook.substack.com/p/the-enron-era-tricks-are-back-in" } ] }, { "question": "main", "side": "crossing", "label": "Voices that cross sides", "claims": [ { "claim": "NVIDIA has extended payment terms for investment-grade customers from 90 days to a full year, lengthening days sales outstanding by 14 days.", "date": "2026-09-09", "url": "https://realeismanplaybook.substack.com/p/inside-ais-fragile-ecosystem-with" }, { "claim": "Anthropic and OpenAI together account for roughly 70% of hyperscaler AI revenue and 25-35% of total cloud revenue, with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google's growth substantially dependent on these two companies.", "date": "2026-08-14", "url": "https://realeismanplaybook.substack.com/p/the-ai-achilles-heel-why-everything" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Ren", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/ren/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "the-seller-funds-its-demand", "label": "The seller funds its demand", "claims": [ { "claim": "Architectures change faster than factories can retool, and with NVIDIA targeting up to 30% lower total cost of ownership with 800 VDC, a shift that large rewards whoever redesigns fastest, so today's winning box may not win in five years, which…", "date": "2026-09-28", "url": null }, { "claim": "Ren believes neoclouds and hybrids with prepayments and secured power offer the best risk-adjusted opportunity, because they earn five to eight times the revenue per megawatt of converted miners and two to three times a colocation REIT on a similar…", "date": "2026-08-31", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "Ed Elson", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/ed-elson/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "Back-end AI can only look profitable while unusually rich and irrational customers burn billions with no return; Ed Elson estimates OpenAI and Anthropic alone account for 60-80% of AI revenues at Amazon, Google and Microsoft and, per The…", "date": "2026-07-07", "url": "https://www.profgmedia.com/p/two-red-flags" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Mia Silverio", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/mia-silverio/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "Anthropic's expected ~$2 trillion IPO valuation is not justified by its numbers, given that it would need $1.2 trillion in annual revenue within 10 years (per Aswath Damodaran) to justify that valuation while the entire current AI products and…", "date": "2026-10-05", "url": "https://www.profgmedia.com/p/americans-are-turning-on-ai-anthropic" }, { "claim": "Anthropic's customer concentration is a risk for its $2 trillion valuation: nearly a quarter of its 2025 revenue came from two customers and 47% of sales ran through Amazon and Google, which is an acceptable problem for a small company but not for…", "date": "2026-10-05", "url": "https://www.profgmedia.com/p/americans-are-turning-on-ai-anthropic" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Daniel Romero", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/daniel-romero/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "IREN is the cheapest neocloud in the market at 2.9 million dollars per MW across 5,800 secured MW, which is about one-quarter of Nebius' valuation per MW and one-seventh of CoreWeave's, despite IREN holding the largest secured power position of any…", "date": "2026-08-28", "url": null }, { "claim": "OpenAI's combined annualized revenue with Anthropic reached $105 billion (OpenAI $40 billion, Anthropic $65 billion) in July 2026, which is nowhere near the figure needed to support the modeled 2027 buildout, and this understates the true gap since…", "date": "2026-09-21", "url": "https://hypertechinvest.com/p/the-math-behind-the-next-ai-rally" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Hugh Vuillier", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/hugh-vuillier/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "With Anthropic and OpenAI delaying their IPO dates, there are increasing signs that the public equity market is running out of marginal buyers.", "date": "2026-10-08", "url": "https://blog.variantperception.com/p/ai-bubble-watch" } ] } ] }, { "name": "JunkBondInvestor", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/junkbondinvestor/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "two-labs-carry-the-chain", "label": "Two labs carry the chain", "claims": [ { "claim": "Neoclouds resemble aircraft lessors stripped of the two features that made lessors safe: their GPU fleet depreciates far faster than an airframe as the next generation arrives, and their customer book is often concentrated in a handful of names.", "date": "2026-06-15", "url": null }, { "claim": "A signed lease at Panther Creek would change how the market values Keel by establishing the economics, improving financing visibility and showing the power portfolio can support a viable data center business, and the full 2.2 GW does not need to…", "date": "2026-09-24", "url": null } ] } ] }, { "name": "Invest in Assets", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/invest-in-assets/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "crossing", "label": "Voices that cross sides", "claims": [ { "claim": "The bull argument for the financing structure holds that Nvidia is not lending money but providing a revenue guarantee on compute capacity with fundamentally different risk, the compute retains value because it is redeployable, and the customers…", "date": "2026-09-05", "url": "https://www.investinassets.net/p/nvidia-earnings-breakdown" }, { "claim": "The core criticism of Nvidia's financing structure is that revenue guarantees on compute capacity becoming cheaper every year means the floor Nvidia is guaranteeing could end up above market rates, and if token prices keep falling, the neoclouds'…", "date": "2026-09-05", "url": "https://www.investinassets.net/p/nvidia-earnings-breakdown" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Michael Spencer", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/michael-spencer/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "crossing", "label": "Voices that cross sides", "claims": [ { "claim": "An Anthropic IPO might be a safer bet than semiconductor or neo-cloud stocks in this climate, because the U.S. needs its frontier model maker and enterprise AI leader, so if Anthropic were ever in serious financial trouble, Nvidia, Amazon and…", "date": "2026-10-01", "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-frontier-google-gemini-4-argon" }, { "claim": "Anthropic is far ahead of OpenAI pre-IPO, both in model quality and ARR, and that lead should only accelerate with IPO proceeds heading into its November IPO.", "date": "2026-10-01", "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-frontier-google-gemini-4-argon" } ] } ] }, { "name": "Edelbridge Alpha", "entity": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/edelbridge-alpha/", "positions": [ { "question": "main", "side": "crossing", "label": "Voices that cross sides", "claims": [ { "claim": "Nvidia's 70% growth guide is restricted by memory chip supply rather than demand, so Nvidia's revenue line is set to stop being a read on AI demand and instead become a signal for component availability.", "date": "2026-08-27", "url": null }, { "claim": "Nvidia is financing neoclouds into existence because that is what the market wants and what benefits Nvidia the most.", "date": "2026-08-27", "url": null } ] } ] } ] }