NVIDIA in talks to guarantee $250B financing for OpenAI buildout, AI hardware stocks sell off

David Moadel | Mon, July 27, 2026, 9:00 AM PDT | 4 min read

Tickers: NVDA | AMD | DELL | ORCL | GOOG

Quick Read

• NVDA fell 5% and AMD dropped 8% after the WSJ reported NVIDIA may guarantee $250 billion for OpenAI's data-center buildout.
• Dell slid 4% on AI-server demand fears, while Oracle has fallen 20% over the past month on overlapping data-center exposure.
• NVIDIA guides $91 billion in Q2 revenue, and AMD's data-center revenue grew 57% YoY, keeping the fundamental bull case intact despite today's selloff.

Shares of NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) are down 5% Monday morning to $197, leading a broad pullback across AI-hardware names after The Wall Street Journal reported that NVIDIA is in talks to guarantee up to $250 billion in financing for OpenAI's data-center buildout. The report has reignited "circular financing" concerns tied to the AI capex cycle.

The selling extends beyond NVIDIA stock:

• Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD): down 8% to $479
• Intel (NASDAQ: INTC): down 4% to $89
• Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL): down 4% to $421

Each of these moves lands inside massive year-to-date (YTD) rallies, so today looks more like a rethink than a break in the AI trade.

A $250 Billion Financing Report Sparks the Selloff

The trigger is the WSJ scoop that NVIDIA would effectively backstop OpenAI's compute buildout at a $250 billion scale. Investors are worried this looks like vendor financing on a historic level, with NVIDIA funding a customer that then buys NVIDIA GPUs and builds data centers packed with them.

The optics matter because AI capex has already ballooned. NVIDIA's Q1 FY2027 data-center revenue hit $75.25 billion, up 92% year over year (YoY), with CEO Jensen Huang describing "the buildout of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history." That framing sounds bullish when demand is organic—and circular when the seller is helping to fund the buyer.

Sympathy Selling, With One Exception

AMD stock is taking the hardest hit because it competes directly for AI-accelerator dollars. Any wobble in the buildout thesis pressures the MI450 growth narrative that helped drive AMD shares up 124% YTD.

Dell shares are sliding on the same worry from the systems side. Dell books AI-server orders tied to data-center capex, and management guided AI-server revenue of $60 billion for FY2027.

Intel is the odd one out. INTC shares are mostly giving back part of Friday's post-earnings pop, with today's move driven by profit-taking rather than the OpenAI story. The company's Q2 2026 revenue came in at $16.13 billion, up 25.4% YoY, with Data Center and AI up 59% YoY to $6.26 billion. Intel was also named host CPU for NVIDIA's DGX Rubin NVL8 systems. The pullback in Intel shares appears to be a function of profit-taking and broader chip softness.

Capex Fatigue Sets In Across the AI Complex

Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) shares are up 4% Monday but have plunged recently on OpenAI and data-center exposure, down 20% over the past month.

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) shares are up 3% today after the company again raised its capital-expenditure forecast.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), the other major OpenAI backer, sits at the center of the same debate.

Traders holding the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SOXX) are feeling this directly, since the fund holds NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel among its top names.