Mark Cuban says AI chips will become the "new cryptocurrency"

Mark Cuban said on August 16 that "chips, as an asset class, will become the new cryptocurrency." Behind this short prediction is the growing demand of artificial intelligence for advanced computing hardware.

Abstract

Mark Cuban believes that chips, as an asset class, may become a new favorite investment similar to cryptocurrencies.

CoreWeave completed a $2.6 billion financing this month based on long-term confidence in GPU needs.

Nvidia recently announced quarterly data center revenue of US$75.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 92%.

CoreWeave pioneered the GPU-backed financing model, demonstrating that chips have been used as collateral in institutional credit markets.

Bitcoin supporter Pierre Rochard opposed Cuban's analogy, arguing that chip manufacturing lacked halving and difficulty adjustment mechanisms.

Cuban did not specify specific financial products, investment structure or timetable in his post.

This comment is widely interpreted as pointing to high-end AI accelerators such as GPUs. However, Cuban did not clearly define the type of chip he was referring to. As a result, his proposition is more like a broad investment view than a published investment project or an established asset class.

"As an asset class, chips will become the new cryptocurrency. "--Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 15, 2026

GPU-backed financing provides a precedent for Cuban's views

AI hardware already plays a role in financial structures, not just as simple as buying semiconductor stocks. On August 10, CoreWeave completed a $2.6 billion deferral term loan to fund high-performance computing infrastructure. The company said the financing structure reflects lenders 'confidence in long-term GPU needs.

The term of the loan, which has a term of approximately five years, exceeds the average three-year term of the customer contracts that support it. CoreWeave said the lender therefore assumed the risk of renewal, based in part on expectations for the future value of Nvidia GPUs deployed on its cloud platform. The deal was also oversubscribed.

CoreWeave has been exploring GPU-backed financing for years. In May, it completed another $3.1 billion publicly syndicated loan and described AI infrastructure financing as an "emerging asset class." This is the definition of CoreWeave and does not mean that a single GPU can currently trade like a cryptocurrency.

AI demand supports a strong GPU economy

Nvidia's latest quarterly data provides another indicator of demand. The chipmaker's data center revenue reached $75.2 billion in the quarter ended April 26, a 92% year-on-year increase. According to its May earnings report, total quarterly revenue reached a record $81.6 billion.

These data do not establish chips as a separate investment category. GPUs are physical assets that face technology obsolescence and rely on power, networks, data center capacity and customer utilization to generate revenue. Its supply also lacks the fixed issuance mechanism unique to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin supporter Pierre Rochard pointed out the difference in response to Cuban. He wrote that chip manufacturing has neither difficulty adjustment nor halving, so it is "not the new Bitcoin."

Cuban's prediction stems from his retreat from Bitcoin

Cuban's latest comments came less than three months after he significantly reduced his holdings of Bitcoin. After losing confidence in Bitcoin's hedging narrative, he sold about 80% of his Bitcoin holdings. Cuban said Bitcoin was "not the hedging tool he expected" and "has lost direction."

He has not given up all digital assets. Cuban said he continues to hold Ethereum because he believes smart contracts and decentralized finance have clearer practicality. In his August 16 comments about chips, he did not say he would replace his remaining cryptocurrency exposure with hardware investments.

What happens next

The clearest way to test Cuban's prediction will be to see whether GPU financing can become more standardized and popular outside of professional AI infrastructure operators. CoreWeave's deal shows that institutional lenders are already willing to finance multibillion-dollar computing infrastructure and take on some of the risks associated with the future profitability of GPUs.

However, for now,"chips as an asset class" remains Cuban's prediction rather than a clear market category. The underlying trends are measurable: Nvidia's data center sales are growing rapidly, and lenders are financing GPU-backed infrastructure with increasingly large transactions. Whether these developments will eventually spawn a cryptocurrency-like liquidity market remains to be seen.