Nvidia's Huang says neocloud demand is 'off the charts' as capital runs scarce

Huang made the comments to CNBC on the sidelines of Nvidia's GTC conference in Berlin on Thursday

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC's Arjun Kharpal that demand for neocloud services, the specialist firms that rent out AI computing capacity, is "off the charts," but that the money to build it out is not keeping pace. "What is missing in the middle is the working capital to fuel that growth," Huang said, "because there's just so much demand across so many sectors of AI, there's a scarcity of capital." He said demand for capital far exceeds its availability, but added, "that's going to get solved."

Speaking separately to Bloomberg the same day, Huang called neoclouds a "good investment" and said "the demand of their compute is incredible." He said he is "quite confident" neoclouds will find funding solutions. He also said he had told Nscale, the UK-based neocloud backed by Nvidia, to "work around the clock" after delays, equipment failures and power constraints at some of its data centre sites, as it pursues a $30 billion IPO valuation that investors have pushed back against.

Nvidia has committed nearly $10 billion toward companies, universities and research institutions as part of a European AI investment push, including a stake worth more than $1 billion in five UK startups announced in London last week. Reports this month have also described Amazon agreeing to pay for AI capacity and chips well before any of it can be put to use.

Huang's comment on scarce capital lands just as the financing strains at CoreWeave, whose borrowing costs have surged and whose bonds trade at a discount after its largest supplier declined to backstop it, have shown how dependent this lending chain is on sentiment rather than balance-sheet strength. Demand running "off the charts" while funding tightens points to a shift in where Nvidia's growth could stall: not chip supply, but whether neoclouds can raise enough capital to keep buying. UBS has said the recent neocloud sell-off, which helped drag the Nasdaq down about 4.5% last week, does not derail the AI investment cycle, and it forecasts AI capital spending rising 33% to $1.2 trillion in 2027, with neoclouds making up under 10% of that total. How much of that gap between demand and financing closes will decide how much of Nvidia's order pipeline turns into shipped revenue.