Nvidia is the central bank of AI

https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2026/09/03/nvidia-is-the-central-bank-of-ai

55•tolugenius•54m ago

Comments

tolugenius•54m ago

epsteingpt•44m ago

This is a good headline and point.

Realistically, they're worse than a central bank, because they can't exactly expand supply monotonically like a normal central bank. Nor do they realistically control rates.

amelius•27m ago

And what is TSMC in this analogy?

tccole•24m ago

Idk… government bonds or something?

creativeSlumber•21m ago

do they lend money to their customers to buy their own chips?

aeonik•21m ago

The currency press operator and manufacturer.

bigyikes•20m ago

What’s upstream of the central bank? …Congress?

itsalwaysgood•19m ago

A platform: aka the foundation under the bank.

The material cement that allows chips to exist above it.

And the platform is made of time: ours.

overcast•10m ago

ASML is the foundation. Without them, none of this would exist.

petcat•4m ago

I think we can go even further and say that IBM, Zeiss, several Japanese companies, and even the US Department of Energy are the actual foundation since ASML is largely just an integrator of many different technologies they license from elsewhere.

treebeard901•19m ago

The Japanese economy and yen carry trade is a close second.Rising oul prices and reduced output due to the conflicts in the Middle East could filter through to increasing yields on Japanese debt. In turn, the yen interventions have to continue to keep it lower than 160, which seems to be the psychological barrier for the yen carry trade.

yieldcrv•16m ago

I view the market as celestial objects influencing each other through a lattice similar to spacetime

Everything influences each other with varying gravitational pull

At one point the mental model was more like a web, but spacetime with mass matches the model more closely

Avicebron•8m ago

Money is a lot like mass, it has it's own gravity.

thrownawaysz•16m ago

I wonder when they will give up on the gaming market because that could take down several publishers and developers. I really don't think it's an if question but a when because it almost feels like an afterthought at this point (they removed the standalone gaming revenue report from the financial reports this summer). Also I don't think AMD and Intel is capable "to step in" to replace them.

CuriouslyC•11m ago

AAA gaming is cooked, and AMD/Intel is plenty able to support indie to AA needs.

12ha6•6m ago

Kushner and MBS bought Electronic Arts for $55 billion, so at least there will be a bailout or instructions to Nvidia to continue gaming cards.

Synthetic7346•3m ago

How so? I have a 5070ti but from what I've read the 9070xt keeps up well enough. As long as you don't need the cuda or dlss AMD is a good option

traverseda•9m ago

Eh, AMD makes a lot of video game console SoCs. If you look at the steam hardware survey most people are running ancient computers.

raincole•9m ago

They're advertising DLSS5 just now though.

u1hcw9nx•15m ago

If Nvidia is a bank, it's an Islamic Bank. They don't take interest (usury), they share profits and risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance

Imagine a scenario where the AI bubble bursts and AI companies and neoclouds go bankrupt en masse, and then a huge rebound occurs when AI has a delayed takeoff. Nvidia ends up with a massive amount of compute on its hands from its backstop deals, and it also owns assets from failed companies when profits start to grow. Hugging face takes the place of OpenAI and Anthropic when their assets are divided between survivors like Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta.

caaqil•5m ago

Of all the BS tech dudebro takes I read on a daily basis, I never guessed I would see this one on HN. It's so absurd it's not even wrong.

pwillia7•12m ago

Should there be a LIBOR for 1GB VRAM set each morning?

Havoc•2m ago

https://www.dramexchange.com/

anthonybourdain•11m ago

Okay, but at some point these investments need to start turning profits; the financing NVDA has arranged is temporary, and private credit needs returns at some point. The overinvestment in AI will lead to a downturn in the capital cycle.

Mistletoe•6m ago

How many top signals like this article do you need to see before you exit the market?

Let’s look to the past:

https://www.history.com/articles/1929-stock-market-crash-war...