According to BlockBeats, on August 16th, Harvard University's latest 13F filing showed that as of June 30th, its holdings of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) remained at 3.0446 million shares, valued at approximately $101.4 million. This holding was identical to the end of the first quarter, ending two consecutive quarters of reductions. Harvard plans to reduce its IBIT holdings by 21% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and by another 43% in the first quarter of 2026.

Currently, IBIT accounts for approximately 2.4% of Harvard's disclosed $4.26 billion US stock portfolio. Its gold-related holdings are even more valuable; as of the end of the second quarter, the combined value of its iShares Gold Trust (IAU) and SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) was approximately $171.2 million. Harvard had previously liquidated its $86.8 million holding in the BlackRock Ethereum ETF and did not add any new Ethereum-related positions in the second quarter.

Harvard University's largest holding is SpaceX, with 12,935,100 shares, worth $2.21 billion, making it the largest single stock holding disclosed in the filing. Harvard's total disclosed U.S. stock assets are approximately $4.3 billion, meaning the SpaceX holding represents 52%.

Other institutions maintained their holdings in IBIT at 14.7219 million and 8.2187 million shares respectively, totaling approximately $764 million. JPMorgan Chase increased its IBIT holdings from approximately 8.3 million shares to 10.4 million shares, while Morgan Stanley reduced its holdings by 4.5%, from 17.3 million shares to approximately 16.5 million shares.

According to a Bloomberg report on August 16th, bond investors are focusing on approximately $70 billion in potential off-balance-sheet guarantee obligations for large AI companies. As AI chip financing expands, such "residual value backing" arrangements may increase further. Nvidia's announcement this week of a $500 billion financing partnership could also provide tens of billions of dollars in residual value backing for related debt transactions.

This type of financing typically involves a special purpose vehicle borrowing money to purchase chips and relying on cash flow generated from user contracts to repay the debt. If a customer stops making payments, the relevant assets are re-leased or sold to repay the debt, and any remaining shortfall is covered by the guarantor. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that the company can provide residual value support up to 25% of the project value, depending on the specific project.

CreditSights analysts say this is essentially similar to Nvidia's "selling put options": the cost is low during the AI boom, but if the industry suddenly experiences a severe downturn, customers default, and hardware values decline, the importance of the related guarantees will increase significantly. Rating agencies are also beginning to view some of these arrangements as contingent obligations similar to debt.

Previously, Meta had used a similar structure in its approximately $27 billion and $13 billion data center debt financings; Broadcom provided most of the residual value backing for its $35 billion AI chip financing related to Anthropic. Moody's warned that if such transactions increase significantly in the short term, it could limit Broadcom's financial flexibility and put pressure on its credit profile.