Transcript
0:05 Welcome back to Closing Bell Overtime. We have this big breaking news this afternoon about what's been happening when it comes to the AI infrastructure bill. This is news that was first out a little earlier today, but we can confirm that news at this point. Nvidia working with some of the biggest names on Wall Street to secure financing for its customers. Joining right now with with us to talk about all of this is Jensen Huang. He, of course, is Nvidia's founder and CEO. David Solomon is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Larry Fink is BlackRock CEO. John Gray is Blackstone's president. Vlad Slezak is global head of digital infrastructure at KKR. Jim Zelter is Apollo's president and Bruce Flatt is Brookfield CEO. And gentlemen, welcome to all of you today. It's kind of amazing to get this group around the table and Larry to have you joining us remotely, too.
0:55 But we have to start with this news. Jensen, this is a big deal and it's a big number. Half a trillion dollars, more than that in terms of financing. this is an expensive bill, but tell us a little bit about how this came together and what exactly it is. >> Well, first of all, I want to thank all of my partners for joining me here today. I think this is the first time this has ever happened before and and I can't imagine a more important time to do it. We're announcing six partnerships today. These partnerships are going to pull together independent long-term capital to fund and support AI infrastructure buildout. This is an extraordinary time, as you know, because this is the first time in some 60 years that the computing industry is going through a fundamental platform shift from the way that software was done before to the way that it's going to be done in the future called artificial intelligence.
1:43 Fundamentally, what's different about this industry and this way of doing computing is that the computer is now part of the infrastructure, like electricity, like the internet. And so you have to think about it like it's infrastructure and build it out accordingly. Every company will probably be powered by it, every country will build it. And so, we're talking about a extraordinarily significant infrastructure build. This is >> With a very hefty price tag, too. >> It's a hefty price tag. Each gigabyte is something like 50, 60 billion dollars.
2:09 And so, there's there's energy involved, there's land power and shell involved, and of course, there's the computing part of it. this is of course also a milestone for our company. We used to build chips that we sell, and and these are technology components that people buy and use. But now, NVIDIA's AI factory platform is really an investable asset, an infrastructure asset. And the reason for that is because it's productive, it's revenue generating. It is fungible, it's used by just about every cloud service provider. It runs every AI model, it runs algorithms of all different types. And so, it has really broad, deep reach and off-takers.
2:49 This is a really great opportunity for us to build out the infrastructure, take advantage of an asset that is investable, long life, and productive. And so, with the partnerships that we have here, we can support a really broad ecosystem buildout. >> Gentlemen, I'll say it's very unusual to have all of you in one place. Most of you compete on one level or another. A lot of times you work together on things, too. But how did this come together? How did they all come to you?
3:14 And David, I'll start with you on that. >> Well, I mean, it it, you know, Jensen Jensen approached us and, you know, we've got a deep belief and a lot of confidence in NVIDIA and what they're doing. We have a We have a deep belief in the opportunity set that's ahead. We, like all the partners at the table, have been spending a lot of time raising capital and thinking about the capital that's necessary and how we create the best access to that capital for people that need it to move things forward. I think one of the things that Goldman Sachs brings to the table is we have an extraordinary distribution network. So, we obviously we bring capital, but we also bring a very, very unique distribution network. But Jensen came, approached us with the idea, and we said, you know, we'd we'd love to to to you about it. We We have a deep belief in the direction of travel and the opportunity set over the course of the next three, five, seven, 10 years. As Jensen highlighted, it's a big infrastructure build, and the capital markets are signaling that there's lots of capital available to support it. And we're trying to find all the different ways that we as an organization, in partnership with other great firms that are doing similar things, can participate in getting the capital to the right places to extend this or accelerate this infrastructure build.
4:18 >> You know, I I described it before as if if I buy a GM car, I might get financing from GM. This is you kind of bringing other people from the outside to say these will be the partners that do this financing. >> You know, this really really quite >> And by the way, it's not Nvidia's money that's coming up on this. >> That's right. This is all third-party, independent, long-term capital that that all of my partners are going to go help us pull together.
4:39 this is really quite extraordinary. This is a phase shift in the way that people think about computing. It used to be, you know, technology. Now it's infrastructure. >> And and I would say that, you know, this is really what David has explained. this is calling all precincts. Yeah. This is American exceptionalism exceptionalism in what Nvidia has created over the last 33 years coming together right now. But this is calling all precincts because really now compute is an asset class. And when we think about the last 100 years, the last century of water and power and utilities, you know, in 2026 and beyond, the next decade, you the US will lead this. It's It's a global imperative, but it's a it's a US imperative. And as I said before, this is really all precincts coming together, not just one market of equity or debt or banks, but it's all. It's need It needs any and all.
5:29 >> American exceptionalism meaning that you are going to be building with an American company, Nvidia and others. But this is financing that could go around the globe. >> No no no doubt, but but the the the depth and breadth of the US global markets in aggregate is the envy of the world. Nvidia is one of the envies of the world what they've created. And what you're seeing here, this consortium of partners, and yes, we do compete, but we finance a tremendous amount together as well. And in the end of the day, this will this will benefit the US economy as a competitive tool for the advancement for the next decade.
6:03 >> Larry, let me get you in because you're not here around the table today, but I I I'd like to get your perspective on this. Is this new money that's going to be spent? Have you already raised this money? Is this money that you were going to be deploying into AI anyway, and it's just kind of only get towards certain partners? >> Well, first of all, hi everyone. Jensen, thank you. Thank you for the trust that you you're giving BlackRock.
6:23 we have some capital now, but we're going to be raising quite a bit more capital. As Jensen said, each gigawatt costs 50 to 60 billion dollars to build out. And we're talking about in the United States alone, we're going to need over 70 gigawatts of power to fuel this. And then you add up everything else around the world. it's it's going to be an enormous financial opportunity. As Jim was talking about American exceptionalism, it has to flow through the American capital markets because this is the biggest source of capital.
6:58 But the other angle that I think this is so important that we must also understand, you know, there's quite a bit of negativity around AI and data centers right now, but let's be clear. This is going to be creating a huge amount of jobs. >> >> you know, you think about even a 100 megawatts of of a data center requires as much as 3 million hours of work orders. And and so, this should be looked upon as a great growth opportunity for the United States, furthering growth elsewhere in the world, and most importantly, we need to raise this money as fast as possible and and put this to work because I think it's really imperative that the United States is the leader in AI in the world. And I think we need to be the leader in the disbursement of this technology around And I think this is why this is so critical and I applaud what Nvidia has has done bringing all these firms together and saying we have a common goal. We need to raise $500 billion.
7:59 obviously that's an unprecedented amount of money, but we're going to have to raise trillions of dollars over the coming years and and I do believe this is going to be representing a fantastic investment. In fact, I think it's going to be such a large investment. Over time you're going to see more and more allocation in in in into this asset class. Jim talked about computer as an asset class, but importantly I look at the financing of data centers.
8:25 This is the very beginning like what it was when I started in the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s. And I look upon this as as a next future for financial engineering. >> All right, let let me ask a question. Larry, David, you you guys might be able to weigh in on this a little bit too. And and John, I think you too. But just the idea of how much money you need to raise with this. Is there enough money within the public and private markets? Do you need government money that would do it? I mean, if you're thinking national highway system when you had a build-out like this, it had to be government money that was spending some of this. Is there enough money in our capital markets to to handle this?
9:02 And is it profitable for the investors? Like who wants to take a John, why don't you jump in on >> Sure. I I would say first off it's great to be here. What Jensen has built is incredible. What I would say is our markets are large and it's one of the great strengths when we talk about America. When you look at our ability to finance $700 billion a year in automotive or a couple trillion dollars a year in housing, I think we're going to see a similar dynamic. And what is supporting it is supply and demand. So today at our companies, we've seen a sevenfold increase in demand for LLMs in the last 6 months.
9:41 And yet, the amount of compute is not keeping up. The data centers, the power, the chips. And so, what you're going to see here is people are going to begin to recognize that this is a financiable asset class. So, when you think about your home, you know, when you go to buy a house, the bank underwrites you, but they also look at the value of your home. >> Mhm. >> When an airline goes to buy a plane, they look at the credit of that company, but also the plane. I think historically here, the limitation has been investors have said, "Oh, I only want so much exposure to this hyperscaler or maybe to this foundational model company." I think when people recognize how powerful and valuable this compute is, no matter who's using it. And in Jensen's case, they've got very fungible, flexible capabilities with their GPUs and the CUDA software. So, what I think his markets are going to recognize the opportunity. If the scale gets very, very big, which it is, pricing could widen out. But, I think in the fullness of time, the recognition of the supply-demand imbalance and the value of the compute is going to draw capital in.
10:51 >> Can I just add one thing? >> Sure, we'll go we'll we'll jump here and here. Okay, let let let's talk about Brookfield in particular, what you guys are doing. >> Look, just on Brookfield in particular, we've been building out backbone infrastructure since the company started. And and originally it started with enormous amounts of power. solar, wind, gas. We moved to data centers and with Jensen, we've now been moving to compute. both financing, but also building this compute. And we cannot build enough power.
11:25 We cannot build enough compute for the demand that John's talking about. So, this is not about is there too much financing being made? It's that we can't build it fast enough. >> But, the question always becomes will the demand stay at those levels? And And And Jensen, you see this. You see further out than probably anybody on what's happening here. Is there a point where we can't keep up at the moment, but the demand change? >> Look, I think what's what's And Jensen will have a an really good opinion on this one. But, what we're seeing in our industrial businesses is we are just scratching the surfaces in using AI and the productivity advances that it's giving us, and we don't even know how to use it yet. But, the productivity advances they're giving us are incredible.
12:11 And this is it's going to this why this backbone is it's laying the foundation in the world for the next evolution of business and wealth creation is because it's so evolutionary or revolutionary that it's going to change everything we do in the world. And And that's why it's so important, and that's why with Jensen pulling capital together, the I I was going to start it to go back to what John was talking about is we're at a point where the situation is that there hasn't been the format for investors to invest into this. And we, David, in particular need to create the structures, and Jensen's leading this to create structures because there's there's hundreds of trillions of dollars of money in the world.
12:56 >> look like what? They have low financing. They basically are you you get Nvidia's stamp of approval like these are customers that we're working with that we are giving our limited supplies to to >> And the system architectures are going to be specified in such a way that when we know that they deploy it, we can continuously improve it. We can bring all kinds of fungible and flexible AI models to it. And if anything were to happen, somebody else could take it over and operate it. And so, Okay, so that's a very big deal. That's That's important, too, that this will be used by somebody even if the players mentioned run out of cash at some point.
13:33 >> There will always be a customer for that computing platform. And the reason for that is because as you know, Nvidia's architecture is fairly universally adopted. >> And in fact, every week we Jensen and us announced a deal in Korea. He's putting up a billion dollars, we're putting up nine billion dollars. Naver is going to use the compute. And it's a it's a it's it's a system You can now systematize that. What we need to do is take that and do it all across the world and all across companies to be able to systematize to bring more compute capacity to the market.
14:09 >> that that brings up And and I want to get to that tomorrow just a minute, but that brings up this important question. There have been all these big numbers that have thrown been thrown around. What you're doing with SK. There was a Wall Street Journal story recently that suggested you'd be backstopping financing for 250 billion dollars for an Open AI plant in Ohio potentially. That's a lot of money, it's a lot of things to carry on your balance sheet. This is not that because this is not money that Nvidia is backstopping in any way, shape, or form.
14:39 >> And those two those two things are not that either. In the case of SK, as you know, we're one of the largest users of memories in the world. We're the largest computer company in the world. And so, we use a lot of memory and our partnership with SK is multi-years and most of that is related to memory consumption and memory partnership. And so so that's what that's that's the SK. With respect to Open AI, I'm not I won't comment about rumors.
15:05 however, today's partnerships is really about expanding it beyond a larger, broader set of ecosystem partners. >> But you have 200 billion dollars in free cash flow. You've got a huge balance sheet. Is it your prerogative to say, "Look, we are not going to pledge our balance sheet against all of these things because you can't. You have other things you're doing it and that's why you bring in outside financing partners? >> No, it's really because there's a phase shift in how we think about computing now and and all my partners here have have all talked about it really eloquently. This is really the first time that technology chips have become an investable asset class. This is a very big concept. It's a this big concept because the computers these these systems are not like our PCs or like our phones. These are revenue generating assets now. They're pro- They're productive, they're long-lived, they're fungible, they're flexible. You can use it for all kinds of different things. And so you have the ability you have the opportunity to support a very large ecosystem of offtakers and NVIDIA developers and AI clouds and AI partners and enterprises all around the world and it's incredibly revenue generating.
16:16 >> Does that change how you see the investor that brings into this or how you look at it on a balance >> Well, the the capital markets have always I mean this is it in in in a simple form and you you did it yourself when you opened and you talked about GM financing a car. The capital markets have been asset-backed financing markets for a long long time. You asked the question about capital availability. what we're doing is we're trying to find different ways to raise or to participate in raising the enormous amount of capital that's necessary to fund this infrastructure buildout and you're starting to see in a sense, you know, asset-based financing against this infrastructure buildout and that's not surprising because these are real assets, they have real value. You can put a tangible value on it and there's a lot of capital out there. I mean one of the things I always step back and think about there's $9 trillion when you think about the US capital markets. There's $9 trillion in US money market funds.
17:03 There's a hundred more than a hundred trillion dollars in US equities. There's a lot of capital out there. It's our job as stewards of the capital markets as well as asset management firms that steward capital for other investors to find the best way to deploy this and will it be a straight line? No. Will there be points, to John's point, where spreads widen out and it feels like things are going too fast? Yes. Will the returns from all of these things be ample? Of course not. There'll be winners and losers, but that's what the capital markets do, and the capital markets are pretty effective and pretty efficient at getting those things right.
17:35 >> Baldomero, let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing as the global head of digital infrastructure at KKR. You've been doing this for a long time. What's changed? What's different? And what's so important about these announcements, this memorandums of under memorandum of under memorandums of understanding? Yeah, I guess it's MOUs, that you would put into that. How does that change the equation for what you've been doing for a long time? >> you for having me, and this is an incredible panel of experts. And Jensen, thank you for the partnership. We're obviously building on the partnership we've established with Helix Digital Infrastructure, which is really an innovative way of building the entire stack of the value chain from from power, from molecule, we call it, to the token, which is I think what we're all describing here.
18:14 I think what has changed is the speed. If you think about the build-out of of internet over 15 years, a couple of gigawatts of of of power was effectively consumed in a centralized fashion. The cloud is the next evolution, 10-15 years, maybe 3x that. Today we're adding that much capacity on a quarterly basis, which is just incredible to think about it, which it takes a whole village to finance this. So, we think about it as capital and capability.
18:39 and that's something we know really well at KKR. We've been knowing this for for quite some time. big investors in data centers and power, and I think we we view this as a really a generational investment opportunity. I want to touch on one thing, which is which is I think what John mentioned, the the the intrinsic value of the compute layer. So, I think we're big believers that that integration is occurring, and the centralization of compute and needs to move up, and the fungibility of compute.
19:02 Of course, Nvidia is an incredible innovator. Just talked about Vera Rubin earlier, and rolling that out. And the efficiency of production of tokens per watt of energy consumed is a step change function, which means that computer is declining rapidly and adoption is increasing even more rapidly. Rapidly, that's why price per token is down 99% and probably collapse into cents. Which means you have to have a very efficient way to finance it, which is I think the parties around here, and then build it infrastructure at scale. At scale and that means time to market and and innovate.
19:33 What's really interesting is that AI A100s, right? So you would think about it that 6 years into it, maybe 6 or 7 years into it. There was still a market for it. You still actually are revenue generating to Jensen's point. That the utilization of those chips is very high, the price per chip is very high, and so you actually are getting revenue on that. And in that way, you can think about it as a revenue stream and you can securitize it or effectively divide that risk and sell it sell it to investors who want to participate anywhere in that stack. And that that really would gets us excited about about this moving upstream, but also owning the big part of the downstream as well. And Jensen calls it still land power and shell.
20:08 >> Hey Jim, just a couple of weeks ago, you and Blackstone or a couple of months ago I should say, you and Blackstone had your own deal that you put together that was pretty similar to financing like this. I think it was $35 billion for Broadcom. How is how is this different and how how do you kind of view these things? >> I think it's another example that what what Jensen was describing a few minutes ago, this whole ecosystem with compute and GPUs being a financial asset you could actually fund and finance. I think those are coming into the mainstream and I think as we've all around the table have been doing this for three and four decades, the constant evolution of of capitalism. And David's right, there will be excesses, there will be pullbacks, but what I think is different right now in '26 is in the past we've thought about these things being financed either through the equity market or maybe the narrow market of private credit. As I said earlier, this is a calling all precincts any and all, but what we've seen is in the equity market, people don't mind having concentrated bets. By the fact that we're bringing in more of an ecosystem and a variety of MOUs. It allows the concentration concerns about one company or one counterparty. What John described is the value between not only the company, but actually facility. That's also going to bring in more dollars around the globe. So, we're at a point time right now, not only is the global industrial renaissance at a peak, but also we have a situation we have more global folks who need long-term, long-duration retirement solutions. So, whether that's done, you know, institutionally or globally or however it is, that's going to be the key to bringing this all together. So, >> David, let me ask you one question on this though. We did have Steve Eisman of The Big Short fame, who was on Squawk Box just about a week and a half ago.
21:47 He came in and said, "Look, the AI trade is the entire market at this point." He said that could be a great thing, or it could be a bad thing, but he said, "Wherever you look, there are growth, and it's not just the chip stocks, it's not just the hyperscalers, it is not just the infrastructure companies that are doing all of this." He says it's the banks cuz they're financing so much of this, too. Is he right? He said, "Look, it it could be a really wonderful thing, or it could be a little concerning because of just the concentration at at this point." Do you agree with him on that, or or do you see other places in the economy right now that are driving >> Well, let's step back. You know, across the S&P, earnings growth in the S&P has been excellent across the S&P. One of the things in my my, you know, colleague John Waldron was on was was on, I think it was on Squawk earlier this week, and he was talking about momentum and earnings growth. And so, you've had really strong earnings growth across the S&P. There are a lot of things that are fueling the market. The economy is in very, very good shape.
22:40 Is there a lot that's coming out of this enormous opportunity set? Absolutely. I'll go back to what I said. Whenever you have an acceleration like this that brings together in the capital markets lots of capital, the markets don't get it exactly right. There'll be capital allocated to things that don't work perfectly, but the capital markets also sort it out. And, you know, So, sort it out relatively effectively. I'm excited about this opportunity. I look forward. I'm not smart enough to tell you what's going to happen in the markets next week, next month, you know, 3 months from now.
23:10 But, when I think about 3, 5, 7 years from now, the productivity gains in the economy, the way the US is positioned in the world, the opportunity for real economic growth and acceleration of economic growth as this technology gets deployed in the economy is enormous. And we're going to see that filter through and it won't be a straight line, but we're going to wake up a decade from now and those benefits are going to be real.
23:31 And I think it's a very exciting time because of that. And you know, it's our job to play a role in trying to, you know, for lack of a better term, intermediate that as either asset managers or participants in the capital markets. But, there's a lot to be optimistic about when you look forward. >> And this is going to impact literally every single trade. And the reason for that is because at first principles, we are going through a platform shift in computing. There's not one industry, there's not one company that's not impacted fundamentally by computing. And of course, we're talking about artificial intelligence, the digitalization of intelligence. There's not one company, one industry, one person that is not affected by intelligence. And so, in every single way, when you say every every company, every industry is affected by the AI trade, it is not surprising. And on first principles, it makes perfect sense.
24:18 >> Yeah, and there will be there will be winners and losers. I mean, they're going to be big companies, just as there have been in other super technology cycles. There'll be big companies that win, there'll be big companies that turn out to be not what people expected. That's part of the capital markets. One of the things that makes the US so exceptional is that people, Americans, want to invest in the market. They want to take risk, okay? And that's that's one of the things that makes our capital markets so special. And so, of course, it's not going to be perfect and there could be people on either side of the trade, but I'm looking out 3, 5, 7, 10 years and I'm very optimistic about what this can bring to productivity in the economy and how that ultimately will bring everybody along.
24:54 >> And I I just say, you know, in Dave is right. It's in the end of the day it's about revenue and cash flow. That's really what matters and certainly Nvidia has proven that. But in my in our 42 years, US economy has gone from 3 >> same age. >> 3 trillion to 33 trillion. I believe that growth is going to probably be accelerated accelerated in the next two decades. And if you believe that, there will be winners and losers. So Steve is right in the sense that there will be winners and losers, but this is accelerates the global economy like we've not seen.
25:24 >> Okay. And also just one thing. >> For sure. >> If you think about it, Becky, enterprises are never early adopters. Right? Today AI is mostly consumer-driven applications, right? Just put a prompt, it comes out. In the generative AI, I think the use cases will just be profound. And I think, as Jensen mentioned, this is not a vertical disruptor. It's a horizontal disruptor across everything. And that that is really difficult to quantify. And I know that makes things a bit scary as an investor because you're trying to triangulate on risk and the and the scale of investment. But I I mean, we're seeing it in our portfolio companies.
25:55 And what Bruce mentioned earlier, you're seeing that payout to be really magnified as we start deploying AI in a systematically and still very early stages of that. >> And because it's multi-industry. >> Exactly. >> that we have a platform that is fungible by all industries, it really de-risks the investment and makes this infrastructure much more investable. >> Larry, I want to get your perspective on this, too. >> >> In terms of you probably represent individual shareholders who want to get access to this, too. It's been frustrating in some ways for them to get access because so many of the big companies have stayed private for so long. What what what does this mean?
26:30 What what does an opportunity like this mean for people who are are looking at the retirement funds and and how they get access to this? >> Well, we're going to be doing both private financing and public financing for this across the board. We're going to be working with pension funds across the world. So I I the access to these types of bond issuance it is going to be much larger. and so I think we're going to see a much broadening of participation.
27:04 as David said $9 trillion of money market funds. You know, this is going to be a very attractive opportunity to move away from a short-term money market return to a a long-dated return. So I look at this as a real long-term opportunity. I actually see this as also an opportunity for those who are over invested in equities. They're going to be moving into these this asset class, too. so this is just going to be expanding the opportunity to invest in a high credit quality investment with long-term returns.
27:41 The thing that I think we we we cannot escape though, we need to make sure that not only this is good for America and and good for our investors. We need to make sure that this is good for everybody. We need to make sure that we're we're broadening participation in AI. One way is investing in these AI securities. But importantly, it is important for all of us to explain why this is good for every community.
28:12 And this is obviously a big conversation going on. You know, we in our own state the governor but I'm more worried about my data centers. And and so so we need to make sure we're properly telling the story and that we're telling the story and showing that this is going to be working. And I'm confident we're going to be able to show that this is working for more and more men and women in the trades. But we need to make sure that we're showing why this is not just a good investment opportunity, but it's a good opportunity for all of Americans.
28:48 >> Becky, I would just add a couple of things. I agree strongly with what Larry has said. You know, there's all this negativity around AI, and yet we're going to have a blue-collar job boom coming from this. >> >> We're going to see advances in health care that people cannot imagine. I know you spend a lot of time in this area, but what AI can do with visualization and looking at collating different information, pulling it together, it's going to radically change outcomes. It's going to make all sorts of individuals able to become entrepreneurs. It's critical for American national defense.
29:23 There are all these things that have value. I'd also point out I don't think it's a coincidence most of us here spend our time in private capital because to build this out the first few years there's no income. Once this gets stabilized, once these are yield-based products, then it's easier to sell them in the public markets, but having this robust private market here is super helpful. And then ultimately a lot of this will migrate. And by the way, we've seen in the evolution companies here that didn't have great credit, you know, you look at a CoreWeave which Jensen backed early on, we did a bunch of financings. Today their cost of borrowing has come down dramatically as they've gone public. As Anthropic and OpenAI get public, their cost of funding will come down. It starts with our private capital which all of us are accessing. Then we go to the public markets, and then this virtual cycle goes. I agree not everything's going to work out, but this is powerful what it's going to mean for society and certainly markets.
30:20 >> Bruce, >> The the one thing I would just end with is that the power is what drives all of this. >> The access to energy. >> Yes, the access to energy, and we need to build more faster. And there is a financing system for power. Like it's not new. What Jensen's doing with compute, it will compute will get to where power is. There is but it physically has to get bitten. Underwritten and like we have 14 nuclear plants that were in various stages of construction today.
30:51 >> Wow. >> And it will be another 40 with another 100 coming. Oh, they're we're going to get them done. >> And this is the first time in a long time that market-driven forces can build out the sustainable energy necessary around the world. >> But back to your >> without government without government funding. >> But we don't need >> This is all market-driven. >> We're we're building these ourselves and they're going to get built all across the United States and and remember we bought Westinghouse out of bankruptcy 7 years ago.
31:19 Nobody was building a nuclear plant and there's going to there's a renaissance going on today in the United States led by Westinghouse that is incredible largely because it's it's carbon-free, it's base load and it's the next energy that's coming. Like today today you're you're there everyone's worried about today but if they knew there was more coming. That's why it takes 5 years to build a plant but if you know what's coming you can consume more of your margin of safety of energy.
31:48 >> So, are these concerns about whether we can meet this demand over over done at this point? Do you do you think Jensen that from where you see things the demand level and how we're building up around it that it's going to be okay, it'll all work out? >> We're going to be constrained for some time and pretty much across the board from chips to memories to packaging to systems photonics connectors land power construction workers the whole thing the entire supply chain up and down behind behind me upstream all the way downstream.
32:21 And this is happening at a time when AI has become useful because it's starting to do productive work and it's happening all over all over the world and AI tokens are profitable incredibly profitable. When you have something profitable, everybody wants to make more of it. >> Yeah. >> Great demand, great profitability, the conditions are exactly right for the work that we're doing right now. >> Jensen, why these companies? And did you go to any partners who said no?
32:52 >> No one said no, but this is the sixth premier world's premier institutional financiers for infrastructure. This is the best of the best. >> What John said, that right now you're you're you'll be less likely to have public capital that comes into this because a lot of these are companies that aren't making money yet. Is he right on that? Or are there going to be big banks and others that kind of step up? >> I believe within months you're going to realize that these companies are extremely profitable. These are the fastest growing technology companies in history.
33:26 >> Your customers, you mean? >> That's right. These are fastest growing technology companies in history, and the tokens they're generating are incredibly profitable. You know, if if the wafers that we buy from TSMC are incredibly profitable, there's incredible demand for it, I'm going to want to buy a lot more, which is going to >> who are we talking about? Your customers, which customers will have access to these AI labs? >> AI labs. >> AI labs are the ones. That's the ones that you think are profitable, but this will this financing go to those labs?
33:51 >> AI startups, you know, as you know, this last 6 months the world put in about 500 billion dollars in AI startups. >> Mhm. >> 500 billion dollars, the largest investing investing period, probably in recent history. And these companies need compute. And so we now have the vehicle to do so. >> when will we see the first deals? >> Well, it's up to these guys. They got We've got to You know, we've got to really We've got to really hustle.
34:20 >> There's plenty in the hopper. >> It sounds like yesterday, yeah. >> I think there's plenty in the hopper. >> Plenty in the hopper. The demand's not the issue. Now we got to hustle and get our get all of our agreements done. >> Okay. Well, folks, I want to thank you very much, all of you, for joining us today. This is very big news. It's the first time we've had the opportunity to sit down with a group of people who are actually the money, the financing behind these deals. And Jensen, to get your insights to what's happening with this, too. You said in the next few months you think that we will see that these companies are profitable, the AI labs?
34:52 >> Well, when they go public, it's going to be the biggest IPOs in history. >> Yeah. >> Well, we appreciate all of your time today. Thank you. And Larry, thank you for joining us remotely. We really appreciate your time today, gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Becky.