Better Offline - Part One: NVIDIA Isn't Enron - So What Is It?

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

In part one of this week's three-part NVIDIA series, Ed Zitron walks you through why NVIDIA is specifically nothing like Enron, WorldCom or Lucent, and why investors might be thinking that’s the case anyway. Thank you to Ben Cahn of the Ben and Emil show for voicing "NVIDIA" - listen here - https://www.youtube.com/@benandemilshow This series took a lot of work, so if you want to support me, why not subscribe to my premium newsletter? Get $10 off a year’s subscription today: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/p94my1c5ya YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Hello and welcome to this week's better off line. I'm Ed Zittron. Now at the end of November, InVedia put out an internal memo that tried to, well, get ahead of a few things, is how I'd put it, that had been bubbling up in the news, specifically comparisons to Enron, the massive energy trading giant that imploded in the early 2000s after, well, a lot of fraud, also with some other concerns about its earnings. Said memo was leaked to Barron's reporter Take Him, who is one of the largest Nvidia boosters in the known universe. He posts constantly about how Nvidia is going to be the biggest, most hugest company in the world. He's meant to be like an analyst and a reporter, but he mostly just seems like a cheerleader. And it's kind of embarrassing. Now, nevertheless, he was leaking a memo that was quite worrisome. So, I don't know, Nvidia chose to disseminate it through him, but also to short-sellers. The actual providence of this, or is it Providence? I don't know. Invidia chose to disseminate it, or is it Providence? I don't know. don't know, but someone will correct me. It's kind of confusing. Anyway, long story short,

people have a few concerns about Nvidia, and, well, you shouldn't, though. You shouldn't have any concerns at all, because Nvidia's very secret not to be leaked immediately document, spent thousands of words very specifically explaining how Nvidia was fine, and most importantly, by the way, nothing like Enron. Now, why did I need to say all of this? And why did Nvidia need to say all of this? Well, Nvidia wrote this note as a response to both short-seller Michael Burry, famous of course from the Big Shore and Sion

Capital. There's a whole bunch of other stuff there, but putting that aside, but also because of another thing, a guy called Shinaka Anselm Pereira, who wrote a piece called, and I quote, the algorithm that detected the $610 billion fraud, how machine intelligence exposed the AI industry's

circular financing scheme, and I've now been sent this about 11 times, maybe more, since it came out. Now, the reason I'm not going to link to Pereira's piece in the show notes or in the companion newsletter to this episode is simple. It's full of bullshit. And I've had some very good reporters link to this thing. I've heard from a lot of people who say, oh, this scared me. And the fact it scared in Vida really pissed me off too, because it's straight up got lies in it, like made up stuff. I'm not even talking just misstatements. I'm talking about really specific things it's made up. For example, in one part

Barrera talks about major semiconductor distributor Arrow electronics stating things in its Q3 2025 earnings about Invidia. Let me be fucking clear about this really piss me off. Arrow makes no statements of any kind about Nvidia on its earnings calls, in its 10Q or its earnings presentation. You can go and look. He doesn't link to anything, by the way. And if you need another example, Barrera claims that when Nvidia launched the Hopper H-100 architecture and Q2 fiscal 2023, also amid reported supply constraints and strong demand, inventory declined 18% quarter over quarter as the company fulfilled backlogged orders. If you bothered to go and look at Nvidia's inventory from that period, which is public, by the way, you can see that inventory increased. Now, I'm not pissed

off at anyone listening to this. I'm pissed off at any financial media that gave this any kind of attention, and I'm kind of pissed off at Nvidia for doing it too. It's AI slop. And I've not heard of Pereira before, but as LinkedIn says he is, and I'm not shitting you, the CEO at PetExpress, Sri Lanka. I would suggest getting your financial advice elsewhere, and at a minimum, making sure that you read outlets that actually source their data. Anyway, as you're probably working out, all of this is fine and normal. This happens normally all the time.

Companies do this all the time, especially successful ones, and there's nothing to be worried about here. Because after reading all seven pages of this document, we can all agree that Nvidia is nothing like Enron. No, really, though. Invidia is nothing like Enron, and it's kind of weird that anyone, especially you, by the way, is saying that Enron and Invidia have any similarities at all. They just put out a very long document. By the way, and it says they're not Enron. Why'd you keep asking about Enron? All right? Why are you being weird? Okay, well, now Nvidia said something about Enron. But that's because fools and vagabonds keep suggesting that Nvidia was like Enron, and very normally, Nvidia has decided, thousands of words at a time to set the record straight. And I genuinely, no jokes, do agree. Invidia is nothing like Enron.

Putting aside how I might feel about the ethics or underlying economics of generative AI, Nvidia is an incredibly successful business that has incredible profits, holds an effective monopoly on Kuda, which powers the underlying software-layer to running software on GPUs, specifically generative AI, and not really much else that has any kind of revenue potential.

Now, I talked a bit about Kuda and the haters' guys, to Nvidia, which I've linked to in the show notes. And yes, while I believe that one day this will all be seen as one of the most egregious waste of capital of all time, for the time being Jensen Huang is potentially the greatest salesperson of all time. Nevertheless, people have somewhat run away with the idea that Nvidia is Enron, in part because of the weird circular deals, Nvidia is built with Neo-Clouds, dedicated AI-focused cloud companies like CallWeave, Lambda and Nebius, who run data centers full of GPUs sold by Nvidia,

which they then uses collateral for loans to buy more GPUs from Nvidia. I can see why people are a little concerned, but as dodgy and weird and unsustainable as this all is, it isn't illegal and it certainly isn't Enron, because Invidia, as I've been trying to tell you, is nothing like Enron. Now, you may be a little confused. I get it. The Nvidia is bringing up Enron at all. Nobody seriously thought that Nvidia was like Enron. Not even the pseudonymous and analyst just Dario, who has been questioning its accounting practices for years,

because Enron was genuinely one of the largest criminal enterprises in history, and Nvidia is, at worst, I believe, a bit dodgy, and doing whatever it can to survive through various forms of accountancy alchemy. Wait, wait, you still think Nvidia is Enron? What's it going to take to convince you? I just told you that Nvidia isn't Enron. Invidia itself has explained at length, as I'll explain by the way, it's not Enron, and I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Enron all the time. Stop being an asshole. Enron and Invidia are nothing alike. Look, look. Invidia's own memo said that, and I quote, Nvidia does not resemble historical accounting frauds because invidia's underlying business is economically sound, its reporting is complete and transparent, and it cares about its reputation for integrity. Now I know what you're thinking.

Why is the largest company on the stock market having to reassure us about its underlying business economics and reporting? One might immediately begin to think, Streisand effect style, that there might be something up with Nvidia's underlying business. But nevertheless, you know what? Fuck it. Invidia, grab your coat. We're going out. Let's forget how all of this ever happened. What?

What was that? First, unlike Enron, Nvidia does not use special purpose entities to hide debt and inflate revenue. Nvidia has one guarantee for which the maximum exposure is disclosed in Note 9 of $860 million and is mitigated by $470 million in escrow. The fair value of the guarantee is accrued and disclosed as having an insignificant value. Nvidia neither controls nor provides most of the financing for the companies in which Nvidia invests. Oh, okay.

I wasn't really thinking about all of that. I was literally just saying how you were nothing like Enron. We're good. Come on. Let's go. Let's... Second, the article claims that NVIDIA resembles WorldCom, but provides no support for the analogy. WorldCom overstated earnings by capitalizing operating expenses as capital expenditures. We are not aware of any claims that NVIDIA has improperly capitalized operating expenses. Several commentators allege that customers have overstated earnings by extending GPU or depreciation schedules beyond economic useful life. Rebutting this claim, some companies have

increased useful life estimates to reflect the fact that GPUs remain useful and profitable for longer than originally anticipated. In many cases, for six years or more. We provide additional context on the depreciation topic below. Okay, I mean, I wasn't even thinking about WorldCom. I wasn't thinking about WorldCom at all. I genuinely hadn't thought about WorldCom in a while. you're nothing. You're nothing like them. Listeners, for context, WorldCom was a telecommunications company that collapsed in the early 2000s, in part because it had a tendency of overstating its earnings by billions and billions of dollars in total $11 billion. This followed a failed merger with Sprint, which was blocked for antitrust reasons, essentially forcing the company to grow its

stock through customers rather than mergers. You know, normal way, kind of. The telecom sector was pretty saturated back then, making this a pretty tall ask. and so we ended up with a bunch of dodgy accounting, which all fell apart when the company filed for bankruptcy. Hmm. Invidia, you're not doing anything worldcomy, are you? Why are you bringing up WorldCom? Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy?

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout, Kate Martin and Rising

hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladecki.

The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast, Superhuman, documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To be clear, by the way, WorldCom was doing capital F fraud, and its CEO, Bernie Ebers, went to prison after an internal team of auditors led by WOLCOMVB of Eternal Auditing, Cynthia Cooper reported $3.8 billion in misallocated expenses and phony accounting entries. That is just straight up fraud.

So, okay, look, InVVVD. You were really specific about saying you didn't capitalize operating expenses as capital expenditures. You're not doing that. That's great. Great stuff. I literally never thought you'd done that before. I genuinely agree. You're nothing like WorldCom. InVidia, nothing like WorldCom. Anyway, glad to hear about the depreciation stuff looking forward to hearing more about third unlike lucent invidia does not rely on vendor financing arrangements to grow revenue in typical vendor financing arrangements customers pay for products over years invidia's dso was 53 in q3 invidio discloses our standard payment terms with payment generally due shortly after delivery of products we do not disclose any vendor financing arrangements our customers are subversed

subject to strict credit evaluation to ensure collectability. Invidia would disclose any receivable longer than one year in long-term other assets. The 623 million other balance as of Q3 does not include extended receivables. Even if it did, the amount would be immaterial to revenue. All right. All right, man. If anyone asks whether you were like famed.com crash outlust technologies, I'll be sure to correct them. God, I'm going to have to explain another business that failed around the millennium right now, aren't I? After all, Lucent's situation was really different. Well, sort of.

Lucent was a giant telecommunications company, the one that was, for a time extremely successful, really, really successful, in fact, turned around by the now infamous Carly Fiorena. Fiorina, who joined Lucent from AT&T, had a strong start, and in her first few years at the company, before she left to join HP, Lucent saw revenues grow by 58% to $38 billion, and net income grow from a small loss to a $4.8 billion profit. InVidia, this all sounds great. Why wouldn't you want to be compared to... Oh, oh yeah, yeah, sorry. You see, in 1997, Fiorina took over the group responsible for selling gear to telecoms providers, and within one year, that business unit grew by just shy of a quarter. In two years, it jumped from $15.7 billion when Fiorena took over to $23.6 billion in 1999. Lucent did this by lending money to its customers with its loans appearing on its balance sheets, as quoting CNN here, an allegedly sold asset.

Now, Lucent was classifying debt as an asset and did something called vendor financing, which means you lend somebody money to buy something from you. It turns out Lucent did a lot of this. And in a very simple way, this is like giving someone a $10 loan to buy $10 of bricks from you. It's just handing the same $10 back and no one's really doing well here. Look, these loans were also very generous with telco's small fledgling telecommunications companies with minimal assets and revenue, by the way, and often mountains of high interest there, often paying nothing up from. The loans themselves were often bigger than the company itself and far beyond what the company could hope to repay. Okay, NVIDIA, look, we're friends, okay? I hate to say this, but I kind of get why somebody might say you're doing lucent stuff. After all, rumor has it that in your supposed deal with OpenAI, a company that burns billions of dollars a year, will maybe involve leasing your GPUs to them, which sure sounds like you're doing vendor finance. We do not disclose any vendor financing arrangements.

Oh, all right. Okay. You're not. Not disclosing any vendor financing arrangements. Okay, I got it, man. Anyway, back to Lucent. Lucent really did fuck up big time, though. Indulging in the dark art of circular vendor financing, the likes of which Nvidia has not, kind of. In 1998, it signed its largest deal,

a $2 billion deal, an equipment and finance agreement with Telecommunications Company Winstar, which promised to bring, I shit you not, $100 million in new business over the next five years, and build a giant wireless broadband network along with expanding Windstar's optical networking. I quote the Wall Street Journal.

Winstar was one of the scores of standalone startup companies created in the late 1990s to compete in the market for local telecom services. These firms, known as competitive local exchange carriers or CLICs, raised billions of dollars in debt and equity financing and embarked upon ambitious plans to compete with incumbent carriers. For a time in the late 90s, their stocks were hot properties outpacing even internet stocks.

In December 1999, Wyatt would say that Winstar's small white-ditch antennas heralded a new era and new mindset in telecommunications and included this awesome quote about Lucent from CEO and founder Will Ruhana. On one level, we're a customer and they are a supplier. On another level, they're a financier and we are a borrower. On yet another level, they are providing services around the world to accelerate our development. They also want to use our service and have guaranteed $100 million in business. Hell yeah. I also love this because you can read this or hear this or what have you and go and read current magazines talking about these companies and see them do the same things. Just look, oh my God, there's actually another great coat I might want to share with you. Winstar is a publicly traded company and has more than 4,000 employees and reports more than $300 million in annualized core revenues. We love annualized revenues, don't we folks?

We love them. Just do month times to where you get the biggest numbers we've ever seen. They're beautiful. We love them. A company making about $25 million a month. $25 million a month in revenue signed a $2 billion loan. $2 billion in financing for business that would make them $100 million across five years. They aren't teaching this in business school, do they?

Weirdly, Winstar's Wikipedia page says that revenues were $445.6 million for the year ending in 1999, around $37.1 million a month. These numbers don't line out so good, and probably because Winstar was kind of crooked. Now, Winstard, they loved raising money. Two years later in November 2000, it would raise $1.02 billion, for example, and it raised a remarkable $5.6 billion between February 1999 and July. 2001, according to the Wall Street Journal. $900 million of that came in December 1999 for an investment for a bunch of investors,

including, of course, Microsoft, with analyst Greg Miller of Jeffries and Coe saying, The Microsoft Investment is a significant endorsement that the technology will be used more aggressively in the future. Winstar can use the capital. They sure fucking can, can, can't they? Now, another fun thing happened in November 2002. Lucent would admit it overstated its fourth quarter profits by improperly. recording $125 million in sales, reducing that quarter's revenue from profitable to break even. Things would eventually collapse when Winstair couldn't pay its debts, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

protection on April 18, 2001, after failing to pay $75 million in interest payments to Lucent, which had cut access to the remaining $400 million, not $400, $400 million, of its $1 billion loan to Winstair as a result. Winstall would file a $10 billion lawsuit in bankruptcy court in Delaware, the very same day, claiming that Lucent breached its contract and forced Windstar into bankruptcy by, well, not offering to give it more money that it would not pay off. Elsewhere, things have begun to unravel for Lucent. A January 2001 story from the New York Times told the strange story of Lucent, a company that made over $33 billion in revenue in its previous fiscal year,

asking to defer the final tranche of payment, $20 million, for an acquisition due to, and I quote, accounting and financial reporting considerations. Now, why would they do that? Well, Lucent needed to keep that money on the books to boost its earnings as its stock was in the toiler, and was about to announce it was laying off 10,000 people and a quarterly loss of over a billion dollars. Over the course of the next few years, Lucent would sell off various entities, and by the end of September 2005, it would have 30,500 staff and a stock price of $2.99, down from a high of $757,000 a share at the edge of $199, and 157,000 employees. According to VC Thomas Tungus, and that is his name, Lucent had $8.1 billion of vendor financing deals at its height. Lucent was still a real company selling real things, but it had massively overextended itself in an attempt to meet demand that didn't really exist, and when Lucent realized that, it decided to create demand itself to please the markets. To quote MIT Tech Review and author Lisa Endlitch, it believed that setting and meeting the expectations of Wall Street subsumed all other goals, and that Lucent had little choice, but to ride the wave.

To be clear, Nvidia is quite different from Luson. It has plenty of money, and the circular deals it does with Corweeve and Lambda don't involve the same levels of risk. Invidia is not, to my knowledge, backstopping Corwee's business or providing it with loans,

though, Nvidia had agreed to buy $6.3 billion of computers, the buyer of last resort, of any unsold capacity, and did mention an unnamed partner it had agreed to backstop the leases of in its most recent earnings. nevertheless, Invidia can afford this, and it isn't illegal, though it is obviously propping up a company with flagging demand.

Invidia doesn't appear to be taking on masses of debt to fund its empire either, with over $56 billion in cash on hand and a mere $8.4 billion in long-term debt. Okay, we got through this, man. Invidia is nothing like Lucent either. Okay, maybe there are some similarities, but it's different. No worries at all. I know I'm chill. I'm relaxed, and I'm most importantly normal. You still seem nervous in video. I promise you. If anyone asks me, if you're like Lucan, I'll tell

them you're not. I'll be sure to tell them you're nothing like Lucent. Are you okay, dude? When did you last sleep? Okay, so about inventory growth indicating waning demand. People are claiming that growing inventory in Q3, which was above 32% quarter over quarter, suggests that demand is weak and chips are accumulating unsold or customers are accepting delivery without payment capability, causing inventory to convert to receivables rather than cash. Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Slow down. Slow down. Who's been saying this? Oh, everybody? Did Michael Burry scare you? Did you watch the big short and say, ah, Christian Bales playing Pantera again? Anyway, now you've woken up everybody else in the house, and they're all wondering why you're talking about receivables. Shouldn't that be fine? In video?

is a big business. Your business is pretty big, man, and it's totally reasonable to believe that a company planning to sell $63 billion of GPUs in the next quarter would have ballooning receivables. $33 billion in receivables up from $27 billion last quarter, and growing inventory. $19.78 billion up from $14.9.6 billion in the last quarter. That is pretty bigger. But nevertheless, Nvidia is a big asset-heavy business, which means Nvidia's clients likely get decent payment terms to raise debt or move cash around to get them paid. Okay, everyone calm down, you can go back to bed, like my buddy, who is nothing like Enron, by the way, just said. First, growing inventory does not necessarily indicate weak demand. In addition to finished goods,

inventory includes significant raw materials and work in progress. Companies with sophisticated supply chains typically build inventory in advance of new product launches to avoid stockouts. invidia's current supply levels are consistent with historical trends and anticipate strong future growth. Second, growing inventory does not indicate customers are accepting delivery without payment capability. InVIDIA recognizes revenue upon shipping a product and deeming collectability probable. The shipping reduces inventory, which is not related to customer payments. Our customers are subject to strict credit evaluation to ensure collectibility. Payment is due shortly after product delivery.

some customers prepay. Invidia's DSO actually decreased sequentially from 54 days to 53 days. Nice, dude. You're totally right. It's pretty common for companies, especially large ones, to deliver something before they receive cash. It happens. I'm being sincere, sounds like companies are paying great. But you know, can you just be just a little more specific? Like the whole shipping things before they're paid thing? Video recognizes revenue upon shipping a product and deeming collectability probable. Yeah, okay, I thought I heard you about the first time. What does deeming collectability probable mean?

You could have just said we get paid like 95% of the time within two months or whatever. Unless it's not like 95 or 90%, how often are you paid with in two months? Most companies don't break this down, by the way. But then again, most companies are not in video, the largest company on the stock market. And if I'm honest, nobody else has reasoned out to put anything out that says, I'm not Enron. And I want to be clear that Invidia is not like Enron. For real, though, it really isn't like Enron. And jokes aside, bits aside, there were very different businesses.

They were very different. Indeed, it is very strange, though, that Invidia wants somebody to think about how it's nothing like Enron. This was technically an internal memo, and thus there was a chance its existence was built for only Invin. Orvidians or short sellers or something worried about the value of the stock. And we know it's definitely written to try and deflect Michael Burry's criticism as well as that as a random AI slop substacker. It's just weird. It's weird. I don't really know what's going on.

And I really want to know, why does Nvidia need you to know it's nothing like Enron? Did it do something like Enron? Is there a chance that you or I may mistakenly say, hey, Is Invidia doing Enron? Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me.

I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4. eye heart. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going from the WMBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like,

it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel on. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals.

At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, Envidia, how you feeling? Yeah, yeah, you had a rough night. You were saying all this crazy stuff about Enron. Are you doing okay? No, no, I get it. You're nothing like Enron. You said a lot of that last night. So while you were sleeping, yeah, you've been asleep at 16 hours, by the way.

You were pretty messed up. You brought up Lucent, then puked in my sink and tried to scream at my cat. I did some digging, though, and like, I get it. You're nothing like Enron. Enron was breaking the law in your video, is definitely not doing that. But you said you didn't use special purpose vehicles recently. You did, though. You are.

You're not using them like Enron. Enron moved the debt around on the SPVs, but you're investing $2 billion in Elon Musk's special purpose vehicle that will then use that money to raise debt to buy GPUs, you, from you, NVIDIA, that would then be rented to Elon Musk. And this is very different to what Enron did. I am with you, dude. Don't let the haters keep you down. No, I don't think a t-shirt that says Nvidia is not like Enron for these specific reasons will help you either. Wait, wait, wait, okay, look, one thing, though. You have this theoretical deal lined up with Sam Altman to invest

$100 billion in Open AI, and yes, you said in your latest earnings that it was actually a letter of intent with the opportunity to invest, which doesn't mean anything. Got it. And the plan was you would lease the GPUs to open AI if the deal happens. Now, theoretically, how would you go about doing that in video? You'd probably need to do exactly the same deal you did with XAI. You would buy the GPUs from yourself and then rent them to open AI. That's a little lucenty. It kind of sounds like vendor financing. And, oh, you mentioned that a real. Look, man. Unlike Lucent, Nvidia does not rely on vendor financing arrangements to grow revenue.

In typical vendor financing arrangements, customers pay for products over years. Invidia's DSO was 53 and Q3. Invidia discloses our standard payment terms with payment generally due shortly after delivery of products. We do not disclose any vendor financing arrangements. Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there for a second.

You were on about this last night, and you scared my cats from you were crying about Zincolm, you're crying about something called two nanometer? I don't know. First of all, why are you bringing up specifically typical vendor financing agreements? Do you have atypical ones? Also, I'm jazzed. I guess I'd say to hear you disclose your standard payment terms, but what standard payment terms? What exactly? Where can I find those, by the way? Because you didn't link them. You didn't mention them. Where are those? And also, look, you're saying the words you don't do. You don't disclose any vendor financing arrangements. Those are the exact words. Those words are very different to

I do not have any, we do not have any vendor financing arrangement. I do not disclose when I go to the bathroom, but I absolutely do use the toilet. Let's not pretend that Nvidia doesn't have a history in helping getting its business buddies funding. Invita has deals with both Lambda and Corweave to guarantee that they will have compute revenue, which they in turn used to raise debt, which is then used to buy more Nvidia GPUs. You've learned how to feed the day into yourself Nvidia. I'm genuinely impressed. This is great stuff.

I'm having the time of my life with how not like Enron you are. And I'm serious that I 100% do not believe you are like Enron. But what exactly are you doing, man? What are you doing to get Wall Street what it wants? I'm serious, though. Seriously, folks. and thank you, Ben, for being Invidia there. Invidia really isn't like Enron, though. It really isn't. And I hear a lot of people saying things like even about Sam Orman, I want to, this is a brief rant here, saying people are going to go to jail, people are going to go to prison, there's fraud, there's fraud here, Corweaves doing fraud, this, that and the other. None of these companies are doing fraud. That's the world we live in. They are doing accountancy alchemy. They're moving stuff around. There are ways that Invidia could be doing all of this. And I'm very sure that this is the case, perfectly legally. Sam Alman, not breaking the law either, assuming he's been honest with his investors.

Nevertheless, for real, though, Nvidia is nothing like Enron. Enron was a criminal enterprise, and Nvidia is not. More than likely, Nvidia is doing relatively boring vendor financing stuff and getting people to pay them on 50-to-60-day timescales, probably net 60, and like it said, it gets paid up front sometimes. Nvidia truly isn't like Enron. After all, Meta, Microsoft and Apple are the ones getting into energy trading,

to the point that I actually think it's time that someone explained what exactly happened to Enron with a more modern twist, or at least as much as it's possible within the confines of a podcast that isn't exclusively about Enron. But I'm going to explain next episode what the fuck Enron was, and you can have some fun listening to him. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattersowski.com.

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