United Kingdom, Aug. 11 -- Nvidia has teamed up with some of the world's biggest financial firms to raise as much as $500 billion (£370 billion) for artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The chipmaker said it had reached agreements with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR.

The deals mark a push to treat AI computing infrastructure, or "compute", as a new investment asset class.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said: "In AI, compute is revenue.

"We are bringing the world's leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure."

The funding will support Nvidia's own projects and infrastructure being developed by its partners.

That is expected to include data c...