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circular financing
also AI circular financing or circular AI deal or circular deal
Definition of circular financing
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: an arrangement within the AI industry in which interconnected companies finance, invest in, or guarantee one another while also buying one another's chips, cloud capacity, data-center services, or other products
- Investors examined whether circular financing was making the chip supplier's revenue appear less independent of its own investments.
- The report mapped the developer, cloud provider, and hardware vendor as both commercial partners and participants in the same circular financing structure.
Two meanings, one word
In everyday English
A financing arrangement in which money flows through linked transactions and eventually returns to its source.
In AI
An arrangement within the AI industry in which interconnected companies finance, invest in, or guarantee one another while also buying one another's chips, cloud…
Origin & history
The financial phrase predates the AI boom, but it became prominent in AI-market analysis from 2025 as developers, chipmakers, cloud providers, and infrastructure firms entered large interdependent investment and purchasing agreements. The International Monetary Fund used circular financing as a defined feature of the AI stack in its April 2026 Global Financial Stability Report.
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Which of these is the meaning of circular financing?
Cite this entry
"Circular financing." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/circular-financing/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.