Cover Story: On the the cover package Nvidia, the world’s most valuable firm. Can it really be worth more than $5trn? Or should investors be worried by its financial engineering? It lends customers money to buy its chips, on such a gigantic scale that pundits call it the “bank of AI”. Critics liken this to the “vendor financing” that puffed up the revenues of network-equipment firms such as Cisco during the dotcom mania. Yet the cover leader is fairly sanguine. Nvidia’s balance-sheet is extraordinarily robust, with a mountain of cash and an enviable stream of profits. If its colossal bets go right, the era of AI may arrive a bit sooner. If they go wrong, the cost will fall chiefly on Nvidia’s shareholders, rather than sparking a broader financial panic. That is how capitalism is supposed to work. Small wonder that Nvidia’s founder, Jensen Huang, is treated like a rockstar when he visits the land of his birth. The Economist looks at the differing paces at which different professions are embracing AI, and the risky rise of the “neoclouds”, firms that buy specialist AI chips and rent them out.