CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday that the latest chapter in the artificial intelligence boom brings back memories of the excesses that fueled the dot-com bubble.
“I lived through the year 2000,” the “Mad Money” host said. “I don’t want the sequel.”
The Wall Street Journal reported this on Sunday Nvidia discussed a $250 billion backstop for OpenAI that would help fund a planned 10-gigawatt artificial intelligence data center campus in Ohio. CNBC confirmed the report on Monday and Nvidia declined to comment. The proposed guarantee would cover the project’s leasing and construction debts, not the Nvidia chips used in the facility. Shares of Nvidia fell more than 4% on Monday, dragging down many semiconductor stocks.
The discussions are the latest example of the increasingly circular nature of AI financing. Nvidia has invested in several companies that are also major customers of its chips, including a $30 billion investment in OpenAI in March and a $10 billion investment in Anthropic last year. The chipmaker has also backed several Neocloud providers that rent Nvidia-based computing capacity to customers. Nvidia said these investments support the growth of the AI ecosystem while providing attractive long-term returns.
Cramer said the circularity of the agreement reminded him of the late 1990s, when telecommunications equipment makers helped customers finance large purchases to spur growth. While these deals initially boosted sales, he recalled that many deals failed when cash-strapped buyers were unable to pay, resulting in heavy losses for both suppliers and investors.
“What we learned in 2000 is that you don’t lend to companies that buy your goods,” Cramer said.
Cramer emphasized that he still sees Nvidia as an exceptionally strong company and does not expect a repeat of the dot-com crash. Rather, he said history shows that investors can quickly lose confidence when suppliers become too dependent on customers, whose huge spending depends on continued access to capital.
“If the buyer, in this case OpenAI, can actually afford to pay for these chips, perhaps because they’re going public … then Nvidia is in great shape,” Cramer said. “If the buyer can’t pay, that’s a different story.”
OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO in June but did not disclose a timeline for its debut. The company was valued at more than $800 billion by private investors in March as it seeks to expand the computing infrastructure needed to run its artificial intelligence models while competing with rivals including alphabet And Meta.
Cramer said the risks extend well beyond Nvidia, with a growing number of companies now relying on continued investment in AI infrastructure.
“There are so many companies that rely on the data center for their revenue,” he said. “If the market decides it doesn’t want to finance more data centers and the companies themselves don’t have the money or don’t get paid, then we’ll be back to the year 2000.”
While Cramer said Nvidia has the financial resources to support projects of this scale, he argued that strong balance sheets alone are not always enough to protect companies from the consequences of overcharging customers.
“Nvidia shouldn’t give these guarantees, even if it has all the money in the world. Just history, that’s all, just history,” he said.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/27/jim-cramer-warns-ai-circular-financing-echoes-dot-com-bubble.html
