Jim Cramer defends Nvidia amid concerns over $80B in debt and massive financing exposure

Nvidia just posted one of the most impressive earnings reports in corporate history, with fiscal Q2 2027 revenue hitting $96.2 billion, a 106% jump from the prior year. And yet the conversation on Wall Street isn’t about the blowout numbers. It’s about what’s lurking underneath them.

Jim Cramer, the CNBC personality who runs the Investing Club portfolio, has stepped into the middle of a growing debate about Nvidia’s financial commitments, which analysts estimate could expose the chipmaker to somewhere between $80 billion and $200 billion in peak liabilities through 2028. His take: hold the stock, ignore the noise, focus on fundamentals.

The debt picture is getting complicated

Nvidia’s gross debt has ballooned in recent months. The company issued $25 billion in senior unsecured notes in June 2026, pushing total gross debt to $33.5 billion. That’s nearly four times the $8.5 billion it carried at the end of the prior fiscal year.

But the headline debt figure is only part of the story. The more complex piece involves Nvidia’s customer financing structures and guarantees tied to major AI projects. Among the largest: commitments related to OpenAI, including a $105 billion residual-value guarantee on one initiative alone.

Multi-year service commitments across Nvidia’s customer base could total between $119 billion and $279 billion, according to analyst estimates. OpenAI’s backing for Nvidia also includes equity investments estimated around $30 billion, plus significant conditional guarantees tied to project financing.

Cramer himself drew the comparison to vendor lending during the dot-com era, when telecom equipment makers financed their customers’ purchases and then watched those loans evaporate when demand collapsed. He expressed caution about the parallel, even while supporting Nvidia’s stock after its earnings report.

Revenue growth that’s hard to argue with

Data center revenue, which is the AI-driven segment that matters most, grew 117% year-over-year to $89 billion in Q2.

For Q3 of fiscal year 2027, Nvidia guided revenue of $108 billion, plus or minus 2%. The company also projected approximately 70% revenue growth for fiscal year 2028.

After Nvidia’s Q2 results dropped, Cramer urged investors to maintain long positions rather than trading around short-term volatility.

Capital management cuts both ways

Nvidia’s board approved an $80 billion share buyback authorization in May 2026, a massive capital return program that signals confidence in the company’s cash generation. It also illustrates the tension at the heart of Nvidia’s financial strategy: the company is simultaneously taking on significant debt, extending enormous guarantees to customers, and returning cash to shareholders at an aggressive clip.

Shares of Nvidia traded between $196 and $219 in late July and early August 2026 as markets digested the financing concerns.

What to watch going forward

Vendor financing has a long and checkered history in tech. Cisco, Lucent, and Nortel all extended generous terms to customers during the late 1990s, and all suffered when the cycle turned.

Cramer’s advice to hold rather than trade reflects a bet that the growth engine is powerful enough to outrun the balance sheet risks. For investors deciding whether to follow that advice, the key metric to watch isn’t revenue. It’s the pace at which those off-balance-sheet commitments grow relative to the cash flow that’s supposed to backstop them.

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