Hedge fund manager George Noble warns Nvidia's circular financing echoes Cisco

According to a report by Eastmoney dated 2026-11-06, hedge fund manager and former Fidelity Investments fund manager George Noble warned on social media on Thursday that Nvidia is heading toward a path similar to the bursting of the internet bubble by "supporting" customers that buy its AI hardware. He drew a direct comparison with Cisco's reliance on supplier financing around the turn of the millennium: at that time, the network equipment supplier lent money to telecom startups unable to prepay for equipment, and when those telecom companies collapsed, Cisco's stock fell 89%, dragging the S&P 500 down by half.

Noble noted that Nvidia currently carries a weight of around 8% in the S&P 500, twice Cisco's weight at the peak of the internet bubble in 2000. He argued that the semiconductor giant is making exactly the same mistake that badly hurt Cisco more than two decades ago. Noble further stated that Nvidia is now carrying out a modern version of the practice by guaranteeing customer lease agreements and holding equity stakes in startups that buy its chips. He said this circular financing structure exposes Nvidia to serious default risk: the more hardware it sells, the more vulnerable it becomes if customers cannot pay their bills. He also wrote that this is the greatest capital misallocation in history, warning that the approach creates dangerous systemic fragility for Nvidia and the broader market. The report does not mention a response from Nvidia.