From selling chips to building an ecosystem: What does NVIDIA's investment in the Brookfield AI Fund mean

According to the latest news, NVIDIA is investing in the Brookfield Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund. This is not an isolated event but another strategic move by NVIDIA in the AI industry chain. From chip design to infrastructure investment, NVIDIA is building a complete AI ecosystem closed loop.

The Infrastructure Ambitions of AI Chip Giants

Why is NVIDIA investing in infrastructure funds

Brookfield is a leading global infrastructure investment firm, and its AI infrastructure fund mainly invests in hardware infrastructure needed for the AI industry, such as data centers and power supplies. NVIDIA’s investment may seem cross-industry, but in fact, it is creating demand for its own chip sales.

The logic is clear: AI model training and inference require massive computing power, large-scale computing needs data centers, and data centers need GPU chips. By investing in infrastructure funds, NVIDIA is essentially helping its customers establish reasons to purchase its chips.

NVIDIA’s comprehensive layout in the AI industry chain

This investment is just the surface. Let’s look at other recent actions by NVIDIA:

• Negotiating acquisition with Israeli AI company AI21 Labs, aiming to acquire for $2-3 billion, valuing its 200 senior talents
• Launching NVIDIA Compute Network (NCN), issuing the token NVAI, allowing users to earn rewards by contributing GPU computing power
• Showing strong performance in the US stock market, with an increase of over 50% this year, and at one point becoming the second-largest asset globally by market value

These moves point in the same direction: NVIDIA not only wants to sell chips but also to participate in every link of the AI ecosystem.

Strategic Significance of Infrastructure Investment

Guarantee from the demand side

Data center construction is accelerating. According to relevant information, the demand for industrial materials like silver in AI data centers has surged, with silver prices increasing over 170% this year. This indicates that the scale of infrastructure investment is far beyond expectations.

By investing in the Brookfield fund, NVIDIA is effectively ensuring that once these data centers are built, they will prioritize purchasing its own GPUs. This is a typical “control demand side” strategy.

Enhancement of industry chain discourse power

NVIDIA has shifted from being a simple chip supplier to becoming a builder of the AI ecosystem. This transformation has several benefits:

• Reducing dependence on a single customer (no longer relying solely on cloud providers)
• Increasing industry chain influence (participating in infrastructure decision-making)
• Creating more stable demand (projects invested in by NVIDIA will inevitably use its chips)

Market Reaction

NVIDIA’s actions reflect a reality: the AI chip market has shifted from incremental competition to stock competition. Merely having performance advantages in chips is no longer enough; controlling the entire industry chain is essential.

In comparison, other chip companies are still competing on performance metrics. NVIDIA has already laid out its ecosystem. This is the fundamental reason why NVIDIA can maintain its market leadership position.

Summary

NVIDIA’s investment in the Brookfield AI Fund is essentially a form of “reverse integration.” It is not integrating from downstream to upstream (like internet companies), but infiltrating from upstream to downstream, ensuring its chips occupy an irreplaceable position in the entire AI infrastructure construction.

Whether this strategy will succeed depends on the returns from infrastructure investment. But based on current industry trends, AI data center construction has just begun, and NVIDIA’s layout is likely to bring substantial returns in the coming years.