OpenAI’s & Nvidia Close Ties, Distyl AI’s $1.8B Valuation, The Climate Week Pivot | Sep 23, 2025

0:13Welcome everyone to the information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Tuesday, September 23rd and we are coming to you from New York City where Climate Week is a week. We're going to try to understand today how this week's events are shaping up. We're going to bring on two people who have been at the center of the climate story to help us figure out how this moment is different from years past. We're also bringing on our AI and finance reporter to talk about the data center leaders to watch in the land of lending. These are the biggest names sitting at the intersection of AI and credit.

0:45And we're then going to bring on the CEO of a Kostla Ventures-backed company that we are first to report just raised money at a valuation of$1.8 billion. But before we get to any of that, I want to start with one of the biggest stories this week. Yesterday, NVIDIA said it would be investing up to$100 billion into OpenAI to help the chat GPT maker build its own data centers. It prompted a flurry of memes online about just how circular the flow of cash between chip companies and cloud companies and AI companies is all getting. I want to bring on our NVIDIA panel that you might be getting familiar now to seeing on our show.

1:24Joining me now is Anissa Gardizi, our cloud and compute reporter at The Information, Aaron Ginn, who is the CEO of a GPU hosting company called Hydra Host, and Jay Goldberg, a senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners. Welcome to the three of you. How are we doing? Good. Doing well. Yeah, doing well. All right, I'll take it. Okay, so Anissa, I want to start with you. We had this big deal announced yesterday. Walk us through the brass tacks of what we need to know, what your take was on it. Yes, yeah. So yesterday morning, Sam Altman and Jensen Wong announced a very unprecedented agreement, mainly because of the size in which NVIDIA would invest up to$100 billion into OpenAI as OpenAI works on building out 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure.

2:13So I know there's lots of big numbers in that, but I think what people need to know is that NVIDIA is really helping finance OpenAI's data center build out. And one important takeaway is that this 10 gigawatts of data center capacity is all net new. So everything else that OpenAI has announced is still in the works, but now there's another new 10 gigawatt project, which is bigger than a major cloud provider is today. So NVIDIA is very closely aligning itself with OpenAI, and OpenAI, which gets some chips from AMD and is working on its own chip, is really aligning itself with NVIDIA. And I think there were concerns about it potentially splitting from only using GPUs.

2:57Well, so there's a lot to dig in there, and I should say that if you haven't yet read it, Anissa's AI agenda this morning is definitely one to read because it was dense. There was a lot of information in it. And I actually, I had to take notes on it all because there was a lot there. So let's go through it. So, you know, one key point you made is that OpenAI can move away from renting NVIDIA GPUs. And, you know, the other thing you mentioned is that, you know, this is kind of like their own announcement of their own Stargate. Just tell us a little bit about that, Anissa. And then, Aaron, I'm coming to you to get your thoughts on this.

3:29Sure. So just in case people don't remember, OpenAI is one of the biggest users of GPUs, but today it rents them from cloud providers. So it doesn't own the chips, it doesn't have to buy them, and it doesn't own any of the data centers where the chips are located. These are all rental contracts with companies like Microsoft and Oracle. But OpenAI wants to own the hardware, but it's hard for a company like OpenAI to buy GPUs. They're very expensive and you sort of have to be creditworthy to get debt at good terms. And so this injection of investment from NVIDIA is really going to help OpenAI actually be able to do what it wants to do, which is buy GPUs.

4:10Right. Aaron, what do you think of all this? I think that it was still running to do a lot of the same problems with this build-out, which is that they're... Build-out not just within particularly OpenAI, but the real impediment to Jensen and the continued growth of AI itself is just debt. It's like the capital expenditures you actually need to do what is projected. As an example, everyone's life certainly is that they, JP Morgan, Bernstein, et cetera, are saying like, it's gonna be a trillion dollars a year to like build, you know, annual TAM to continue to build out this stuff. And based on what's happening on public cloud side, you're looking at them more or less spending all of their cash times three just to maintain their minority market share.

4:50So clearly this has to go to private markets, has to go to alternatives. But the problem is that currently the way a lot of this debt is structured is that it's highly isolated to the equity of the company. And so that's like saying, when I go get a mortgage, so like, you know, Akash was going to get a mortgage. Right now, they're backing the chart of accounts of you. But what happens afterwards is they sell that to somebody else who bets on the market of mortgages, on the markets of homes. That's what's currently missing in the debt credit space is that there's no sort of secondary offtaker to which you can create liquidity for that primary lender.

5:24And so then NVIDIA has to be in this position to basically provide a liquidity for projects. And I think that's more what's going on here than the kind of circular stuff that people make fun about the Oracle, they make fun of. But in reality, it's like in the context of a company that's having, you know, $100 billion of essentially free cash flow every quarter. Like this is kind of like nothing, like in terms of that, and especially in the course of several years. Really what you should be looking at is like why are credit markets locked up? why are Microsoft, Amazon, Navias, Foray, et cetera, trying to create these different kinds of instruments is that the world on the debt side, on the investor side, has not caught up to where the demand is.

6:06And so if Jensen's going to make sales, he has to resolve that capital problem. Right. Jay, I want to get your thoughts here, but really I was excited to get you on because I thought you'd be the perfect person to cast a little bit of doubt maybe on the circularity of all this. Talk to me about what your reaction was here. So it was just that. This feels very much like vendor financing. This is NVIDIA buying demand. And I think Aaron makes a great point is that the capital markets are reluctant here to come up with some alternative structures. And part of that is just a bug in that this is new and the financing sources are still getting up to speed.

6:44I spent a lot of time with private credit people trying to understand what this market is and what a data center is and what AI is. So there is that bug and lock up in the system. But the other side of it too is there are some pretty sophisticated finance sources out there who are starting to push back a little bit and question how many GPUs we need, how's this all going to work, where's the money going? There's a lot of questions still out there. There's a reason for a hard time raising that money. But Jay, hear me out here. You know, we were talking about it in the newsroom this morning. I mean, you know, in a world where OpenAI is so closely embedded with NVIDIA, who is so closely embedded with, you know, Oracle, who is so closely embedded with OpenAI.

7:28I mean, doesn't it just feel like, you know, anything that goes wrong in this story will really just cause kind of a cascade of reactions? I think that's very much where we've been all along is if you go back to the start of this, OpenAI started, Microsoft saw what they were doing. They started spending heavily against that. Everyone else saw what Microsoft was spending. They felt that they had to do it too. And it sparked this positive cycle, this vicious cycle, I don't know, where everybody was spending to keep up with everybody else. And there's a very heavy degree of psychology and just belief in AGI, I guess, or something, some undefined goal out there.

8:06And at some point, that can reverse. And I don't know when that's going to happen, probably not soon, but it is very psychologically driven. Anissa, I want to come back to what you wrote this morning and some of the reporting you did. Two of the questions I've had are, number one, could this data center deal or this LOI investment, intent to invest, whatever you want to call it, could this perspective, $100 billion, could that cannibalize other data center deals that OpenAI has with other companies? That's the first question I have. And the second question is, could it also mean something for, as we've reported, OpenAI has also been doing some work with Google and its chips, its TPUs, right?

8:48It's been working with Broadcom. It's been reported to build its own chips. Talk about what you're hearing along those two questions and if you could see this story impacting those? Sure. So on the ground, Oven AI has many, many projects in the air when it comes to data centers. And this one with NVIDIA potentially is 10 gigawatts. I think we all have to remember that there aren't that many gigawatts just laying around for companies to use. This is like a really challenging infrastructure problem. And there's not a lot of supply of these types of data centers, whether or not NVIDIA promises you the chips or not.

9:28And so because OpenAI has all of these balls in the air, all of those companies are going to be looking for data centers to host the chips, whether it's CoreWeave renting to OpenAI, Oracle renting to OpenAI for that 4.5 gigawatts, or OpenAI building its own data centers with NVIDIA. And so I do think that in the supply chain, the actual companies that build these data centers might realize that they're talking to Oracle and Microsoft and OpenAI, but the end customer is all OpenAI. So I do think that there's going to be a little bit of that there. And then to your last question about what does this say about OpenAI's efforts to diversify away from NVIDIA, potentially use its own chip, use Google's chip, potentially use AMD.

10:14I don't think OpenAI is going to stop in its tracks and not pursue those other efforts. But one of my takeaways from from the interview that sam altman did yesterday was that you know they're kind of all in on nvidia for this this massive project and so i think you know i don't really know what the chances are that opening his own chip would surpass the commitment to nvidia at this point but um you know yesterday was an announcement with nvidia so i think that's why it was all about nvidia as well yeah jay do you think they do you think they sort of put any breaks on on their own chip efforts because of this at all i think everybody's pursuing every strategy that they can nobody nobody wants to be totally dependent on nvidia but these custom silicon projects are risky and so good good to hedge your bets aaron what do you think uh yeah i think that they most of it as jay was saying i think is the actual strategy which is like create leverage over nvidia and because the number one concern in terms of the deal like the capital is like again very small and i agree with what what uh the rest of the panel was saying around like okay what is stargate is the stargate now because what is the other stargate what happened to those other ones over there right and nobody fully understands because everyone shows up announces it then there's no follow-on uh and and i think that that's where like in some respects opening i can do it because it's it's currently the kingmaker with with jensen so they can just continually kind of do this and like nobody really questions.

11:43But in terms of, I think, what the custom Silicon does or AMD, but there was an AMD announcement, I think, earlier or late last week, is to create optionality. And when NVIDIA is so far ahead in terms of the technical curve and as well as making as much money as it is, as being a largest buyer, you're incentivized, even if it's just play money, and that play money can be a couple billion dollars, it helps you in these negotiations. But as you were saying earlier, a lot of this stuff is just structured as a letter of intent. And so who knows what it actually turns into. So if the construct itself that what they signed was a little bit like, I just, you know, Microsoft worded a document that you can sign and I can get a loan against.

12:28Yeah, you should probably assume that in terms of the following steps that it's still kind of up in the air. But I think what the real takeaway is that there are constraints now in the market that NVIDIA is looking at that is not demand related. It's capital, it's power. It's like, that's what they think is going to slow their growth now. And so they're trying to find different ways of enhancing the ecosystem. And I have to tell you, this perfectly tees up the next guest we have on the show. We've got Myles Krupa, our AI and finance reporter coming on to talk about debt. And then we've got a Climate Week panel coming on.

13:00So this story is so much bigger than just an LOI, which I'll find$100 billion. I guess it's newsworthy. We would all want that. I love how I love it. All right. Well, look, I want to thank the three of you for coming on. This is the second time in a week, and I trust that there's going to be more news to cover. That is our all-star NVIDIA panel with Anissa, with Aaron, and with Jay. I want to thank you all for being here. Okay. Thank you. Well, when you need as much money as AI companies do, equity isn't always the answer. In fact, as it relates to building data centers, debt is a popular source of funds.

13:37And so today, the information published a story about the lenders backing AI data centers that should absolutely be on your radar. I want to bring on Myles Krupa, our AI and finance reporter, to talk about those names and why they are at the top of his watch list. Myles, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you. Thanks, Akash. Okay, so before we get into the list, I'm hoping you can just explain to us how is it that debt and AI intersect right now in this story? Yeah, it's a huge intersection. I think it's kind of the most interesting corner of finance right now. Basically, data centers that are needed for the AI build out are just getting bigger and bigger.

14:20It used to be common to have data centers with maybe 50 megawatts of power or 100 megawatts of power. And now we're seeing companies building gigawatt plus of power. And so as these data centers keep getting bigger, the cost to build them keep getting bigger. And so the big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, they're increasingly outsourcing a lot of this to third-party developers, companies like Vantage and QTS. And we're seeing those companies and others go to the debt markets to raise a lot of money for some of these really big data centers. So, you know, we're seeing deals in the tens of billions of dollars and we're seeing lenders step up and have to write really big checks and work with other lenders increasingly.

15:05So, yeah. And very quickly, before we get into the names, look, when I was studying business in undergrad, I remember debt is cheaper than equity. I remember this, the age old adage. Is that the only reason that people are going to the debt markets? Or is there another reason why debt, as opposed to other funding sources, is really perfect for AI data centers? Yeah, that's right. With debt, you're able to finance these data centers one by one on a project finance basis. So instead of the data center developers or a tech company like Meta having to raise more equity and dilute shareholders, they're able to raise capital for these specific projects one by one.

15:51And that just makes it more efficient. Right. Okay. So let's get to the list. The first name on your list was JP Morgan Chase. Why are they at the top of your list of the lenders to watch? Yeah, that's right. And maybe they're not a very surprising name to have at the top of the list, given that they're such a big lender with such a big balance sheet. But they've really moved with speed into data center financing. They did a big deal with this data center company, Crusoe, which you may know Crusoe as part of the Stargate project. They're building this big data center in Abilene for Oracle and OpenAI.

16:31And so JPMorgan took down that entire$9.4 billion debt deal instead of working with other banks on that. Now they're going to start selling that to other banks through a process called syndication, but it was a pretty bold move to kind of take that entire loan themselves. So they're active in that way. And they're also involved in a bunch of other deals that are really big. Right. Talk to me about the number two list here, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo. Right. So these are two Japanese banks that have been really active in infrastructure debt for a while. And a big reason for that is that interest rates in Japan are so low.

17:14So these banks have a much lower cost of funding than some of their American counterparts. And so they've been really active in infrastructure for a while, and they've been getting into data centers as part of that for the past decade. So Sumitomo in particular was one of the first movers in doing these kind of construction loans for data center companies going back to 2016. They've been pushing credit rating agencies to start giving ratings to some of these loans, which widens the pool of lenders that can participate. So they've been playing a really key role. And that kind of hints on sort of the next question I wanted to ask you before we get to the next name on the list.

17:56You know, I've wondered about how these lenders sort of compete with each other. One way is, of course, just the rate that they give for these loans. Is it merely a price thing or just like in venture, the way some firms can say, you know, we will support you with sort of more qualitative things about running your business. Are there ways that lenders compete against each other for these data center deals? Yeah, definitely. I mean, you're seeing a lot of competition between the banks and private credit funds. Now, that's not a new phenomenon. You know, the growth of private credit has been a huge thing over the past decade.

18:29But what you're seeing is with these deals just getting bigger and bigger and more bespoke. You're seeing banks and the private credit funds compete on terms, different ways to structure the deals. And so basically, everything is on the table right now. Right. Let's get to a couple of other names here. Blackstone is a name that we know very well. Tell us about the CoreWeb deal that they underwrote. Yeah. So the CoreWeb deal is a little bit different than your normal data center deal. In that case, they were financing the purchase of chips for CoreWeave, which is a cloud company. And that was a$7.5 billion deal that Blackstone led.

19:09They put in more than$4 billion. And so this was kind of the marquee deal in this chip financing world. And you've seen Blackstone also do a lot of more conventional data center deals. They own two large data center companies. So they've been lending to those as well. So, you know, one of the things I just want to ask you very quickly before we let you go is what questions this raised for you as you were doing a reporting? I take it we're going to read a lot more about debt and the information as these data centers get constructed. Were there reporting questions or things that you want to watch for going forward as a result of the research that you did here?

19:51Yeah, well, I think really one of the most basic things that I learned is that this market is actually kind of opaque. I mean, a lot of these are private deals, private credit, or loans that banks are making and syndicating to other banks. And so there's actually really not a ton of information out there about the way these are structured, the terms, the rates, the participants. and so it just made me think I should be doing more reporting on this. The world needs to know a bit more about how these deals are getting done because they're so central to how AI is being built out. Great. Well, Miles, it was a story unlike a few other, I should say, the information hasn't yet written too much about debt and so it was a story that really caught my eye.

20:37Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about it. That is Miles Krupa, our AI and finance reporter at The Information. Okay, well, it is climate week here in New York City, and what a time it is for clean energy and the green tech sector. There is a lot of movement on the policy front, and that has created an interesting environment for tech startups in this space. I'm sorry about that. I want to bring on two people who know this space very well, and they're going to help us make sense of it. Frank Maisano is a founding partner at the policy consulting company called Bracewell, and Raj Kapoor is the co-founder and managing partner at Climactic, a climate-focused venture capital fund.

21:14Welcome to the two of you. It's great to have both of you here. Great to be here. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. Frank, I want to start with you. You're here at Climate Week. You've been to a number of these Climate Weeks before. How is this year different than past years in your experience? Well, it's very interesting. I think there are two factors at play here. One, industry is way more engaged. And I think partly that's because I think there's some uncertainty around what will happen at who will go to Brazil for COP30. Like for a couple of years ago when we were in Dubai, industry showed up in force because it was easy, right?

21:53They're used to going to Dubai. There are lots of hotels, things like that. I think there's some uncertainty about who will go to Brazil because of where the events are and some of the uncertainty around how you can get around. And so I think more people have invested in here. I think the second thing is not just in the Trump administration and the politics of the Trump administration, but also the global political scene has really kind of pulled back from some of the climate, aggressive climate positions that it had previously. And you're seeing some energy reality kind of take the place of those wishful hopes of meeting really strict limitations.

22:41Raj, how are you thinking about Climate Week this year as it relates to venture capital and startups and how the tech sector is looking at it? Yeah, so I would say that our brethren has definitely been licking their wounds, but I think we're beyond that stage now. And the certainty we have is that we're always going to be in a state of uncertainty. And the comfort there is with that. And the key is now to not try to talk down to about green and climate. It's to figure out what the customer wants and to really listen. And the bottom line is they want efficiency. They want resilience for their supply chains.

23:17So you're seeing startups that are going after not just reducing carbon, but how do we drive efficiency? And we have the two of the greatest technologies right now to do that, AI and robotics. And there's a big push around both those things and how we can make an impact. Frank, how much discussion is there this year around the data centers? Well, that is a big topic everywhere, right? That is a big topic in Washington. That is a big topic in capitals around the globe and in states. That's a big topic here. And what are people saying? I mean, is it just part of concern? Yeah, really, it's a big concern because we don't really know how much power we're going to need.

23:54We do know that we're going to need almost every electron that we can find right now. Now, we're seeing that in places like Virginia and in the Northeast, where even a thing like offshore wind has where the administration has kind of pushed back on it some. You've seen those places say, hey, what are we going to do? How are we going to meet that data center and that consumer demand that is exploding? So if we're going to have a lot of advanced technology, if we're going to have data centers and we're going to continue to let the customer do what the customer wants to do and meet those needs, we're going to have to find places to get electrons.

24:31And so that becomes a discussion point here and how you can do it in the most efficient and cleanest way. Raj, how are your portfolio companies and startups that you're talking to, how are they thinking about sort of helping us meet the demands for data centers, but do it in a way that doesn't hurt the environment? So I would say that there's two set factors that are really big here. One is that we're going to need a lot more energy than we have. And whatever an administration wants to say about energy sources, right now, the here and now that's working well, especially for China, is solar and batteries.

25:06There's a 90-month backlog, from what I hear, on natural gas turbines. And so the reckoning is not going to be politics. It's going to be in the next year or two how we just absolutely have to bring more energy online. So we're ready with lots of startups that can help the solar and battery explosion that we're seeing. And that's not, frankly, slowing down, especially at the utility scale. And then in data centers themselves, there's so much innovation that's going on from cooling to chips. We're bringing down the energy consumption per token significantly. And again, there's probably 200 startups going after that just to look.

25:38But then how are you thinking about sort of the policy rollbacks? We didn't talk about wind, for example, but the current administration, the way that they're rolling back the incentives for wind and solar, how are your companies thinking about that? So I think in critical conditions where there's a need, like when we talk about data center energy, the policy is not going to make much of a difference because we need to bring on energy fast. And there's only a certain amount that we can do that. So it certainly has slowed things down when you think about the edges. But the core need that we're going to have around data centers is going to drive what can we deploy quickly.

26:13And it's just great news that it's renewables. So if I hear you correctly, you're saying that, hey, the policy has changed, but for these large-scale data center projects, that's not going to make a difference insofar as how we supply the energy, even though the policy is different now? Am I hearing you right? I would say that the here and now, these policy changes have impact years from now. The here and now is what do we do the next year or two that's going to make a difference. And also, the data centers are owned by the hyperscalers. The hyperscalers, 84 % of all companies are still maintaining or increasing their climate commitment, even though it doesn't feel that way when you look at the media.

26:50And they are looking aggressively at renewables, including things like nuclear as well, to solve the problem. And frankly, a larger problem, too, is local permitting, right? I think that's a bigger problem than what these policy changes will make, as Raj says, in the long term. We're still seeing some pushback. Of course, I've worked on lots of projects from fossil projects to renewable projects. They all see some sort of local pushback at times, and data centers are subject to the same type of attacks, right? And so to me, that's the larger risk in the short term is those local politics and local supervisors getting in the way of communities or helping communities stop these projects when you have some NIMBYs that don't want them there.