Nvidia has announced strategic partnerships with a group of the world’s largest asset managers to raise $500bn in third-party capital to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

The chipmaker has signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish financing platforms for its customers.

The firms said that this new platform will turn Nvidia’s chips and full-stack AI infrastructure into an investable asset class for global capital.

The partnerships, which remain subject to execution of final agreements, will also enable Nvidia’s customers to avoid using their own balance sheets to purchase chips and instead borrow from dedicated pools of capital at attractive rates.

“We began by building chips; today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

Nvidia calls its compute an “investable asset” with Huang arguing it is unique due to its broad adoption, flexibility and transferability across customers.

“It is supported by a deep global ecosystem of developers, customers and offtakers,” he said. “That is why we are bringing the world’s leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure.”

The partnership comes as asset managers continue to aggressively expand their alternative capabilities, including infrastructure, as it remains one of the industry’s key growth avenues.

Jon Gray, president and COO of Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, said: “We continue to be enormous investors globally across the Nvidia ecosystem, and this announcement further underscores our confidence in their platform and the future of AI infrastructure.”

Bruce Flatt, CEO of Brookfield said: “With demand for large-scale AI compute growing significantly as adoption scales across industries, compute is fast becoming the essential layer of infrastructure and a core pillar of the Brookfield AI infrastructure strategy.”

Apollo president Jim Zelter said: “Modern compute has emerged as a scarce, mission-critical asset class with compelling investment characteristics that is positioned to drive significant long-term economic growth and productivity gains.”

Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, said: “This partnership deepens our relationship with Nvidia, including through the AI Infrastructure Partnership, and brings together Nvidia’s leadership in accelerated computing with BlackRock’s ability to connect long-term capital to essential infrastructure.”

Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall, co-chief executive officers of KKR said: “Compute has become a critical infrastructure asset. As we’ve scaled our approach to digital infrastructure, we’ve learned that delivery, not ambition, is the hard part.”

David Solomon, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs said: “Our investment and distribution roles reflect our confidence in Nvidia’s leadership, and we’re excited for the new opportunity to create a market for credit backed by Nvidia compute.”