Nvidia has already pumped 40 billion dollars into AI companies in the first few months of 2026. That sum is bigger than the annual budget of half the Balkan countries. And a large chunk of it is going to companies that are... Nvidia's own customers.

Of the total, 30 billion dollars goes to OpenAI. That single investment, on its own, would be a historic event - now it is just a line in the portfolio of one chipmaker. On top of that, seven multi-billion-dollar investments into publicly traded companies, the latest: up to 3.2 billion dollars into glass maker Corning and 2.1 billion dollars into data centre operator IREN.

According to FactSet data, Nvidia took part in around 24 funding rounds for private startups in 2026, on top of 67 such rounds in 2025. Which means that every week of this year it has been signing a deal with some AI startup. And at the same time - all those companies will be buying chips from Nvidia to build everything they sell.

Wedbush Securities analyst Matt Bryson calls this "a circular investment theme" - money circling around the same group of players. Company A invests in Company B, which then uses that money to buy products from Company A. It looks like growth. It looks like a healthy market. In reality, it is the same sum being counted again and again. Bryson adds that if it works, it can become a "competitive moat" for Nvidia.

Circular business arrangements are not new - they were a symptom right before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. But back then the sums were in the millions, not the billions. And back then no single company controlled 90% of the hardware without which none of the players could function. The question economists whisper and analysts loudly dismiss: what happens when the music stops?