Darrell Duffie, Stanford
“The feedback between providers and users of funding, although not necessarily inefficient overall, does increase fragility.”
Response: Agree
Campbell R. Harvey, Duke
“I know this reminds us of Lucent and Nortel in 1999 and vendor financing. However, there is a crucial difference. The vendor financing is small compared to Nvidia’s cash flows. Also, Nvidia’s balance sheet is much stronger than Lucent’s was.”
Response: Uncertain
Jonathan Parker, MIT
“Financing the AI investment boom by lending from suppliers of chips to users of chips keeps more of the risks within the sector and out of banks, pension funds, etc. If AI turns out to be less profitable than expected, the financial fallout has less systemic impact.”
Response: Disagree