GMI Cloud Raises $668M With Nvidia Equity and CTBC Debt

GMI Cloud, one of seven "Nvidia Cloud Partners" built entirely to the chipmaker's reference stack, closed $668 million of mixed financing on September 30. The package splits into $223 million of equity led by ARCHIV with Nvidia participating, and $445 million of credit led by Taiwan's CTBC, The Information reported.

The credit piece is the structurally interesting half. The CTBC-arranged facility is being described in loan-market coverage as APAC's first GPU-backed syndicated loan, with total debt capped at 55% of the value of Nvidia's master service agreements over the remaining lease term, and drawdowns limited to 80% of Phase 1 and Phase 2 server capex. The collateral sits inside a 16MW build in Taiwan, the Taiwan AI Factory, slated to house 7,488 Nvidia GPUs with total server capex of about US$546 million.

The wrinkle is where Nvidia sits in the money flow. Nvidia both consumes capacity internally and leases capacity under the long-term MSAs that anchor the collateral, and takes a revenue share on top. "In payment waterfall terms, Nvidia is effectively in a quasi-super-senior position for its shareable revenue, ahead of bank fees, interest and principal," a Hong Kong-based loan banker told IFR. Whatever CTBC's syndicate lenders think they own, Nvidia gets paid first.

The equity money will "expand AI computing capabilities across the U.S. and Asia," per the company's statement. It lands inside a broader run of Nvidia neocloud financing our infrastructure tracker has been logging, including reporting a day earlier that Nvidia is in early talks with insurers like Howden Re to backstop neocloud AI-chip loans.