Nvidia has held talks with insurance companies about shouldering the risks of lending against its chips as CEO Jensen Huang pushes to unlock more demand beyond Big Tech. The chipmaker has approached insurers about structures shifting capital-intensive semiconductor financing risk, including coverage for losses on loans to “neoclouds” if they default and pledged chips cannot be resold. The discussions are at an early stage but show Nvidia experimenting across Wall Street, private capital, and insurance to widen its customer base.

Huang has described chips as an investable asset class like aeroplanes. Nvidia offered to backstop financing to unlock $500bn from Goldman Sachs and Apollo, guaranteed $105bn of leases for an OpenAI data centre, and expects a quarter of next year’s revenue from AI labs it supports on its balance sheet.

Insurers are launching AI infrastructure products covering credit risk, chip value falls, and contract breaches from power or cooling failures. Nvidia shared depreciation data with at least one insurer and is working with broker Howden Re, led by Ingemar Lanevi, head of financial solutions. The scale may overwhelm insurers, so Nvidia is exploring consortiums with hedge funds and asset managers.