Nvidia is co-signer and chipmaker as Zankore's $3.1 billion GPU loan prices near 7.3%
The first public price print for an Nvidia-backed Asian AI factory lands this week at SOFR plus 330 basis points, with Nvidia on both sides of the credit: it backs the borrower and makes the collateral.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Zankore, an Indonesian AI infrastructure platform backed by Nvidia−0.55% — Nvidia, down 0.55 percent today, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Ooredoo, signed a $3.1 billion loan in September to buy Nvidia GPUs for a new AI factory, and this morning Bloomberg reports the loan is being taken to the broader bank market 1. United Overseas Bank and Citigroup+1.07% — Citigroup, up 1.07 percent today are among five original underwriters marketing it at 330 basis points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, five-year tenor 1.
Other banks are being invited to join the senior phase this week, so this is the window in which the market prices the deal 1. That turns a financing seen only in private into a public price print.
Nvidia is co-signer and chipmaker at once
The complication sits in who stands where. Nvidia backs the borrower and makes the collateral: its revenue-sharing and credit-support model, launched in July, eases lenders' repayment concerns 2. "Nvidia is helping us to make it financeable," Zankore chairman Vikram Sinha said 2.
But credit support answers repayment, not what the GPUs fetch at auction in 2031 2. Bank-led GPU deals have been scarce in Asia precisely because the residual value of used chips is unpriceable and US-China rivalry adds geopolitical risk 2. In effect, the 330 basis points is the fee lenders charge for carrying that residual-value risk, and the entity that made the collateral is also the reason the loan clears at all 2.
The same co-signer structure, priced elsewhere
This is not a lone case. Broadcom+1.69% — Broadcom, up 1.69 percent today just gave "residual value support" to the banks and Blackstone+0.68% — Blackstone, up 0.68 percent today lending $63 billion to buy its AI chips for Anthropic, a structure where $43.5 billion ranks first-lien 4. Nvidia on both sides of Zankore's loan is the same mechanism: the chipmaker guarantees the machine it sells, so lenders fund the hardware without having an opinion on used-chip prices.
What the print says about the price of AI money
Read against pricing this desk has already recorded: Lambda sold insurers $1.008 billion of GPU debt at 6.78% for 30,000 Nvidia chips (October 5, 2026) 5, CoreWeave+1.44% — CoreWeave, up 1.44 percent today pays 5.9% on its secured A3 loan and 14% on its parent's unsecured notes (October 28, 2026) 6, and BlackRock's+1.53% — BlackRock, up 1.53 percent today Rick Rieder said he would only buy AI debt that is secured and yields about 7% (October 27, 2026) 7.
An unrated Asian AI factory clearing at roughly 7.3%, assuming SOFR near 4%, sits just above Rieder's bar. Secured GPU money now prices between roughly 6% and 7.5%, and residual-value risk is what separates the top of that range from CoreWeave's 5.9% secured print.
Zankore prints just above Rieder's 7% bar for secured AI debt
- Estimate
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Rieder's bar (secured, ~7%) (estimate) | 7 |
| Zankore SOFR+330 (~7.3%) (estimate) | 7.3 |
| Lambda GPU debt (Oct 5) | 6.78 |
| CoreWeave secured A3 | 5.9 |
| CoreWeave parent notes (unsecured) (estimate) | 14 |
The same Nvidia-and-sovereign template appeared one geography over this week: Firebird.ai, an Armenian-American AI infrastructure firm, obtained export licenses for 45,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs for a data center built with Kazakhtelecom, Kazakhstan's national telecom operator, first phase due Q3 2027 and up to 500 megawatts planned 3.
Neoclouds, the smaller cloud providers renting AI compute instead of building for themselves, now have a public benchmark. Watch the syndication books this week: if the senior phase fills at 330, GPU-secured debt has a market price; if banks balk, the residual-value question was never answered, only deferred.
Get Data Center by email, free
Who is building AI's data centers, and who is paying for them. In our daily email, every weekday.
More about NVIDIA
NVDA · Fiscal Q2 2027Revenue rose 106% to $96.2B, 92.5% of it from Data Center, “driven by the ramp of our Blackwell Ultra infrastructure”. Gains on equity stakes of $7.8B lifted net income to $59.7B.
Show as a table
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $96.2B |
| Gross margin | 75.0% |
| Operating margin | 66.2% |
| Net income | $59.7B |
| Hyperscale | $48.7B |
| AI clouds & enterprise | $40.3B |
| Data Center | $89.0B |
| Edge Computing | $7.2B |
| Gross profit | $72.1B |
| Cost of revenue | $24.1B |
| Other income | $7.8B |
| Operating income | $63.7B |
| Operating expenses | $8.4B |
| Tax | $11.8B |
| R&D | $7.1B |
| SG&A | $1.4B |
