Circular Financing: Does Nvidia’s $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?
When Nvidia announced a $100 billion investment commitment to OpenAI1 in September 2025 , analysts immediately drew comparisons to the telecom bubble. The concern : is this vendor financing , where a supplier lends money to customers so they can buy the supplier’s products , a harbinger of another spectacular collapse? American tech companies will spend $300-400 billion on AI infrastructure in 20252,3 , exceeding any prior single-year corporate infrastructure investment in nominal dollars.3 David Cahn estimates the revenue gap has grown to $600 billion4. I analyzed the numbers. The similarities are striking , but the differences matter. The Lucent Playbook Lucent’s revenue peaked at $37.92B in 1999 , crashed 69% to $11.80B by 2002 , never recovered. Merged with Alcatel in 2006….
