Nvidia’s Circular AI Economy: Billions in Deals Fueling Its Own Chip Demand
Nvidia’s aggressive dealmaking reveals a self-reinforcing cycle. The chipmaker’s $10 billion Anthropic partnership—followed by Anthropic’s $30 billion Azure compute commitment—exemplifies its strategy: fund AI developers who then become captive customers for its hardware.
The numbers defy conventional scaling. October’s $500 billion chip order backlog for 2025-2026 dwarfs last year’s $4.3 billion gaming revenue. This pivot from graphics cards to AI infrastructure mirrors the industry’s tectonic shift.
Deal velocity accelerates. 59 transactions worth $23.7 billion year-to-date include landmark bets: $6.6 billion on OpenAI, $6 billion for xAI, and a $100 billion OpenAI commitment that sent NVDA shares soaring. Each deal strings another pearl on Nvidia’s self-referential necklace—capital deployed returns as hardware orders.
