By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Reuters) – Nvidia has paid several billion dollars to help fund new factories for glassmaker Corning in addition to taking an equity stake of up to $3.2 billion disclosed earlier this week, the CEOs of the two companies confirmed on Thursday.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the AI chip supplier has made “a multi-billion-dollar prepayment” that was not disclosed when it announced an equity investment earlier this week in Corning, whose glass is used in the fiber-optic cables that connect computers in massive data centers. He spoke on CNBC in a joint interview with Corning CEO Wendell Weeks.
“It’s going to create thousands of jobs,” Huang said. “He’s going to build brand new factories” that will increase U.S. production capacity by “a factor of 10.”
Later in the interview, Weeks confirmed the prepayment, without disclosing the sum, and said it was separate from the equity investment.
“He’s going to be helping invest in these great factories in the U.S., and then, as well as that, he’s got an option to build about a $3 billion position in our equity,” Weeks told CNBC’s Jim Cramer.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Sonali Paul)
