The artificial-intelligence boom is stretching financial and political limits. So Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta Platforms leader Mark Zuckerberg have laid out key parts of the vision for the next, even costlier and more delicate, stage of the AI revolution. 

One problem for AI lies on Wall Street. Reactions to recent Big Tech earnings showed shareholders were wary of an eye-watering $2.7 trillion in long-term spending commitments. Even the corporate bond market is feeling the strain as lenders demand higher yields to fund AI projects. 

Nvidia has looked to ease the financing bottleneck by making investments across the AI ecosystem. But the chip maker’s huge balance sheet has its limits, so now it has partnered with Wall Street firms to make $500 billion in capital available for its customers. Nvidia’s Huang hopes to essentially turn AI infrastructure into its own asset class. 

Main Street isn’t happy with AI, either. Neighbors are pushing back on the location of new data centers and politicians are increasingly putting greater restrictions on new projects. Meta CEO Zuckerberg is taking on the challenge, publishing a 6,500 word essay on Monday that included a pledge for a $1 billion fund to invest in the communities where it is building data centers as well as a commitment to “open-weight” AI models, meaning they are more transparent for users. 

On the whole, the twin initiatives look positive. Unlocking new pools of capital, engaging with local communities and making AI more understandable is a better fiscal and PR campaign than a constant stream of reports of AI-directed cyberattacks. OpenAI and Anthropic might want to take note as they prepare for their IPOs in the coming months. 

But the real test will come with execution. Nvidia needs to justify half a trillion dollars in backing by proving there are productive uses of AI. And Meta has to show its open-weight models can compete at the cutting edge. If they fail, brace for the AI backlash.

—Adam Clark

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Nvidia has lined up a bunch of Wall Street heavy-hitters to put together a $500 billion fund that will help customers finance their purchases of chips and access to Nvidia’s AI platform. CEO Jensen Huang says they are helping to create a new class of productive, investible infrastructure: AI factories.

• Aside from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street participants include BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, and Brookfield Asset Management. The deals, which have yet to be finalized, give Nvidia more financial firepower to support its customers—hence the “Bank of Nvidia” moniker.

• Nvidia has made 66 private-company investments in 2025 and 2026, according to FactSet, with some investors questioning whether the board should instead return that capital to shareholders. But in this case, Nvidia is committing third party capital through the Wall Street alliances.

• The agreements likely won’t ease concerns about circular financing. Nvidia is at the center of a dizzying web of investment between cloud providers, chip makers, AI labs, and others. That arrangement gives Nvidia plenty of upside if its funding supports more AI demand, but it also leaves it exposed in a downturn.

• Apollo and Blackstone have an arrangement with Broadcom to enable a similar financing platform for its chip customers. The arrangement offers funding to firms such as Anthropic, which can use it to buy computing power from Broadcom-developed chips, including Google’s processing units, The Wall Street Journal reported.

What’s Next: Wall Street has been flocking to AI infrastructure projects. The Journal reported last month that Nvidia was talking with Anthropic rival OpenAI about a $250 billion backstop for a data-center project. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms is working with BlackRock to finance a new $14 billion data center in Texas.

—Nate Wolf and Liz Moyer

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a 6,500-word essay on Monday outlining an inclusive vision for what Meta calls “superintelligence.” The message to legislatures, investors, and billions of users: Don’t be scared of artificial intelligence. It may be a tough sell.

• Zuckerberg imagines personal AI agents, technology to aid creative and scientific pursuits, and broad, affordable access to these tools—all through Meta, naturally. While other labs are focused on building AI for companies or governments, Meta is focused on building “personal superintelligence for everyone,” he wrote.

• Meta unveiled an open-weight AI model called Muse Glimmer, for users to run on their own devices, and is investing $1 billion in the localities where it is building data centers. Meta is aiming to win the public’s trust and become a leading voice in the AI boom.

• But the AI industry in general and Meta in particular have a public-relations problem that will require more than a letter or $1 billion to solve. A growing backlash against data centers, including some construction moratoriums, has criticized the data centers for pollution, water usage, and energy consumption.

• Meta is spending an estimated $130 billion to $145 billion this year for its data-center buildout, and analysts expect that figure to grow through 2028. AI skepticism is a bigger problem for Meta, because the consumer-focused company needs people to use its personal AI agents.

What’s Next: Meta is separately facing other public relations challenges, including a flood of lawsuits over social media addiction and online child protections. Four states are seeking $1.4 trillion in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Meta calls the demands false and “outlandish.”

—Nate Wolf and Janet H. Cho

Intel is expanding production to meet surging demand—but there will be a price to pay for its shareholders. The chip maker now plans to raise $20 billion via a stock offering, up from $15 billion originally.

• Intel said it would increase the offering in a press release after Monday’s close. The company is now planning to issue 210.5 million shares at a price of $95 a share, about 6.5% below where the stock was trading at the start of this week.

• Shares dropped 4.1% to close at $97.52 on Monday after Intel disclosed its initial $15 billion fund-raising plan. That gave the company a market capitalization of around $492 billion.

• Intel is taking advantage of its surging share price. The stock was a Barron’s pick for 2026 and is up more than 160% this year through Monday’s close, although it has dropped 19% in the past three months.

• It’s no secret why the company needs cash, as it plows money into expanding its chip production. Intel reported a cumulative free cash flow of negative $44 billion between 2022 and 2025.

What’s Next: Intel management said in its recent earnings call that they were raising their 2026 capital expenditure estimates to more than $20 billion, up from around $18 billion, as the company works to meet rising demand. But free cash flow is expected to be modestly negative again this year, per FactSet.

—Adam Clark and George Glover

SpaceX stock is surging after the post-initial public offering lockup period expired. Shares of the Elon Musk-led satellite and AI company have been on a wild ride since a closing high of $201.80 on June 16 after the IPO and have tumbled 30% from that record.

• Wall Street was braced last week for severe selling pressure when SpaceX’s first lockup expiration freed roughly 911 million restricted insider shares. But a massive wave of insider dumping failed to materialize. That caught short sellers off guard, triggering a wave of short-covering and dip-buying from sidelined investors.

• Before the unlock, only about 5% of SpaceX’s shares traded freely on the open market, causing severe illiquidity and high volatility. Expanding the free float to more than 1.5 billion shares eased trading bottlenecks, allowing large institutional funds to accumulate bulk positions without spiking order execution costs.

• Citi reiterated its $200 price target for the stock and revised its guidance for 2026-2027 higher, seeing approximately $1 trillion revenue by 2031. SpaceX said it expects to hit that milestone by 2030. The Citi analysts said they see greater confidence in management’s vision than Wall Street’s consensus.

• SpaceX and Musk’s Tesla have a joint $16.8 billion investment to build Terafab, a semiconductor factory in Grimes County, Texas. The specialized facility is designed to produce in-house AI chips to power both Tesla’s robotics and SpaceX’s orbital data-center network.

What’s Next: Wall Street will be approaching the next lockup expiration cautiously, and it only has to wait a few more days. It comes before the market opens on Aug. 20 and will unlock an additional 7% of restricted shares held by employees and general pre-IPO holders onto the open market.

—Patrick O’Donnell and