Airplanes are expensive, but banks are comfortable lending money against them. An aircraft can remain useful for decades, there is an established global resale market, and lenders have years of historical data showing what different models are likely to be worth over time. Nvidia now wants Wall Street to start thinking about its AI chips in a similar way. The company is working to turn GPUs—the hardware powering the artificial-intelligence boom—into financeable assets that can be used as collateral for enormous infrastructure loans.

The ambition is massive. Nvidia is supporting a financing initiative that could eventually reach roughly $500 billion, helping AI companies and cloud providers fund the servers and data centers needed to run increasingly powerful models. The basic idea is familiar: instead of requiring a company to pay billions upfront for computing infrastructure, lenders finance the purchase and use the equipment itself as part of the collateral. Nvidia argues that its GPUs are productive, transferable assets that can continue generating revenue for years.

Wall Street’s problem is that an Nvidia GPU is not an airplane. Commercial aircraft can remain in service for 20 or 30 years. AI hardware evolves dramatically faster. A chip that is considered cutting edge today may face substantially more powerful competition only a few years from now. Banks therefore tend to depreciate AI chips over roughly three or four years, even as Nvidia argues that some of its hardware may remain useful for as long as a decade. That difference in assumptions matters enormously when billions of dollars are being lent against the equipment.

The issue comes down to residual value. If a borrower stops making payments on an aircraft loan, the lender can repossess the plane and potentially lease or sell it to another airline. The market for used aircraft is well established. If a cloud company defaults on a loan backed by thousands of AI chips, the bank needs confidence that another customer will actually want those chips—and that they will still be worth enough to recover the outstanding debt. That secondary market is much younger, and technology changes far faster than aviation.

This is why lenders increasingly want more than the hardware itself. Banks and credit investors are looking for long-term customer contracts, predictable revenue streams and guarantees from financially strong companies before providing large loans. A rack full of expensive GPUs may look valuable, but the real security could ultimately be the contract from a major customer promising to pay for the computing capacity those GPUs produce. In finance, the ability of an asset to generate reliable cash flow can matter more than its original purchase price.

If Nvidia succeeds, however, the implications could be enormous. Turning GPUs into a recognized financial asset would allow smaller AI infrastructure companies to raise far more capital without relying entirely on equity investors. Airlines do not pay cash for every new aircraft because specialized financing markets allow them to spread the cost across years of operation. A similar system for computing could help fund the trillions of dollars of infrastructure expected to be required for AI.

It would also represent an important evolution in Nvidia’s business model. The company would no longer simply manufacture chips and sell them to customers. It would help build the financial system that allows customers to afford those chips. Nvidia has already used investments, guarantees and financing relationships to support companies throughout the AI ecosystem. Building a mature lending market around GPUs would take that strategy further by making access to capital another tool for expanding demand.

There is a risk in that strategy. When sellers begin helping finance buyers, it becomes harder to distinguish pure customer demand from demand supported by financing. The same dynamic has appeared in industries ranging from automobiles and heavy machinery to telecommunications equipment. Financing can accelerate adoption and create enormous markets, but it also increases financial connections between manufacturers, lenders and customers. If the economics of AI infrastructure weaken, those connections could transmit losses through the system.

The bigger lesson is that an asset does not become good collateral simply because it is expensive. Banks care about durability, resale markets, predictable depreciation and the ability to recover money if something goes wrong. Nvidia is trying to convince Wall Street that computing power deserves to join aircraft, real estate and industrial equipment as a major financeable asset class. Whether that happens may depend less on how powerful the chips are today and more on a much harder question: what will those chips still be worth five years from now?

We all do! Just put down your phones for an hour and make it an imperative to catch Bryce Edwards at his next engagement. He’s to be found at Birdland a few times a year, and tours around the country the rest of the time.

Who would imagine that a young man could be a Master of Music that’s a century old? An evening with Bryce Edwards includes syncopation, scatting, and a fortuitous blending of ragtime and jazz. There was enough musical horsepower on that stage to propel the audience to Chicago, and we happily landed in the first few decades of the previous century. Edwards had an impish smile on his face for the entire evening that was infectious. I can’t imagine a more welcome contagion than to be immersed in the music that helped people get through the Great Depression. As proof of how effective this was, many audience members were swaying, tapping toes, and slapping thighs in response. I even spotted some shoulders shaking!

This performer had a controlled energy that was a joy to witness. He never oversold a number, nor did he make a movement that was not relevant. His face was expressive to a delightful degree, and, like the rest of him, it never stopped moving.

Bryce and Reilly Wilmit

Edwards is a handsome fellow who is lucky to look like no one else. His “steady girl” as he refers to her, Reilly Wilmit, matched him in the looks department and resembled the pure beauties from that long-gone time of iconic simple pulchritude—Evelyn Nesbit for example. (Nesbit was considered one of the most beautiful women in New York during the early 1900s; Stanford White clearly agreed!) Together they performed “They Didn’t Believe Me” from 1914 (Herbert Reynolds/Jerome Kern) with a genuine charm that was heartwarming and endearing. They even sealed the number with a kiss! Edwards claims that “hot schmaltz” is his favorite genre—if it’s yours as well, get acquainted with Bryce Edwards.

As was said in the 1920s, this was a show that was “good for what ails you.”

G.H. Harding

LICENSED TO ILLEANA! — Seems like the one and only actress/author and film historian extraordinaire Illeana Douglas is on quite a roll heading from summer into autumn. After earning a remarkable three starred reviews in the book trade from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, her new book was just declared One of the Year’s Best Film Books by IndieWire: https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/illeana-douglas-on-the-women-1235215874/

What’s the new book, you ask? Well, it’s called Jungle Red!: The Making of MGM’s The Women and it’s a doozy! Chock-full of what Douglas playfully refers to as a Tinseltown tale of “feuds, fights, and five-letter females,” you get the Golden Age of Hollywood—warts and all—across every scintillating page of Jungle Red!

Douglas—granddaughter of two-time Oscar winning actor Melvyn Douglas (his remarkably nuanced performance opposite Peter Sellers in 1979’s classic Being There still holds up!)—knows a thing or two about a thing or two in Hollywood. She’s also a crackerjack writer of the tallest order, able to elicit an unexpected laugh—or tears—from a reader across the span of a mere page or two. This being her third book, a continued career of “pen to paper” seems all but assured.

And the lady is the living definition of peripatetic. After having just finished a co-starring role in comedienne and View host Joy Behar’s new play Bonkers in the Boroughs at Sag Harbor’s storied Bay Street Theater,she’s lined up now for a big book launch tomorrow in her native Connecticut at The Kate (a.k.a., The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center) and will be joined by NPR’s Colin McEnroe as moderator).

Everyone who’s anyone will be in attendance tonight night in Old Saybrook.

https://www.thekate.org/event/illeana-douglas-book-launch/

If that wasn’t enough, check this out—Sunday was the thirtieth anniversary of the great Brill Building musical dramedy Grace of My Heart (which Douglas made in collaboration with acclaimed Gas Food Lodging director Allison Anders). The film remains a favorite (John Turturro’s eccentric but heartfelt turn as a Phil Spector-esque record producer is a classic performance!) – and you can see it right now, either on Amazon Prime or over on the Criterion Channel. Check out the trailer to get a better look at a great film about great musicmaking.

Jerry Hall

SHORT TAKES —– Remember Jerry Hall? Paramour of Bryan Ferry; married to Mick Jagger and Rupert Murdoch? She’s 70 now with several daughters from Mick – check this out from The Telegraph in the U.K.: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/people/jerry-hall-interview-single-at-70/ …

Ted Lasso

Has this fourth season of Apple+’s Ted Lasso really been good.? I’ve found them mostly charming, but nothing like their first three seasons of unleashed dynamite. And, what the heck is Tracey Ullman doing there? The Hollywood Reporter called it mostly a dog’s dinner. Check this out: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/ted-lasso-season-4-episode-6-recap-1236697138/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=6aa3fb661181560001c45e2c&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawUSIe5wZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMTZqdUZ3dndrSGFzNldDT2pzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEey0PyPMGwKvg9KM4fle76DzzbwoDfLlQgZrukCITgvDVVmPC0uz4AvmkAY4M_aem_tFq732Hc5pBZpw5IFyNeMg … I think this is a great saying: if you don’t kill time; it kills you ...

Just watched 1968’s The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway; directed by Norman Jewison. Hold up for certain and that chess scene is astonishing … Goldmine’s Tone Scott and Rock Cellar’s Ken Sharp at Micky Dolenz’s 60th Anniversary how Saturday night at The United Theater Downtown in L.A. … Interesting to see Judy Judy’s-stepping down missive from her long-term running show in Monday’s New York Times and not in best-friend’s Cindy Adam’s New York Post column. Something must be up … Happy Bday Randy Jones … RIP Bob Mackie!

NAMES IN THE NEWS —– Brit Brashear; Toby Kebbell; Grolan Stationary; The House That Ruth Built; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; George Fabian; Mark Bego; Anthony Pomes; Stu Fine; Cory Robbins; Tony King; Pye Jackson; Tina Malave; Alison Martino; Lush Ice; Chuck Darrow; Eddie O’Loughlin; Thomas Silverman; Burt Conrad; Tony Mandich; Paul Chase; G&W Photo; Heather Moore; Dave Peaslee; Paul Iorio; Lee Jeske; and SADIE!

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There are dates New Yorkers remember, and then there is September 11.

Today marks 25 years since the morning that changed New York City, America and, in ways we are still living with, the world. A quarter century has passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93. Yet in New York, 25 years has never been enough distance to turn 9/11 completely into history.

Too many people remember exactly where they were. Too many families still live with an empty chair. Too many first responders and recovery workers have become sick or died because they went toward Ground Zero when everyone else was trying to get away.

On Friday, September 11, 2026, Manhattan will remember.

At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the 25th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony begins at 8:40 a.m. The Memorial Plaza ceremony is private and reserved for family members of those killed in the September 11 attacks and the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, although the ceremony will be streamed online. The Museum itself will be closed to the public for the day.

As it has for nearly a quarter century, the heart of the ceremony will remain remarkably simple: the reading of the names. Names rather than numbers.

Family members will read the names of those lost, interrupted by moments of silence marking the terrible chronology of that morning—the moments when the planes struck and when the towers fell. For the first time this year, the ceremony will add another moment of silence for those who survived September 11 itself but later died from illnesses and injuries associated with exposure to the toxic dust and debris. That addition matters.

September 11 did not end on September 11. Firefighters, police officers, construction workers, sanitation workers, volunteers and thousands of others spent days and months breathing the air around Ground Zero. Twenty-five years later, the consequences continue. The FDNY itself has marked this anniversary with Resilience, a film examining the continuing health toll among World Trade Center responders, alongside Remembering Judge, honoring beloved FDNY Chaplain Father Mychal Judge, officially recorded as Victim 0001.

Midtown will offer its own extraordinary remembrance.

At Bryant Park, 2,753 empty chairs will cover the lawn, representing the lives lost in New York on September 11. From 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., visitors can place a flower on one of the chairs. For the first 3,000 flowers placed by the public, Bank of America is scheduled to donate $25 per flower to organizations supporting New York’s first responders and their families.

There is something almost unbearably effective about an empty chair. We have seen the photographs of the towers. We know the number 2,753. But a chair represents the person who should still be sitting in it. That evening, Bryant Park will move from silence into music.

At 7 p.m., Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra in the free New York Resounds, created to commemorate the 25th anniversary. The program begins with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and includes George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, Charles Ives’ The Gong on the Hook and Ladder, Haydn’s Symphony No. 44, the Trauersinfonie or “Mourning Symphony,” and the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10.

There could hardly be a more appropriate opening than Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

For all the politicians and dignitaries who will attend commemorations Friday, the enduring story of September 11 belongs largely to ordinary people who behaved extraordinarily: firefighters climbing stairs while others descended them; police officers, paramedics and Port Authority officers running toward danger; strangers helping strangers; ferry crews evacuating Manhattan; taxi drivers carrying rescue workers home; sanitation workers clearing debris; doctors and nurses waiting for casualties; restaurant workers feeding exhausted responders.

New York City is also bringing some of those lesser-known stories back onto its streets through Memory Markers: 9/11, a new digital project appearing on LinkNYC kiosks across the five boroughs. The geographically placed stories recall the largely forgotten places that became part of the response—including the Midtown warehouse converted into an Emergency Operations Center after the original center was destroyed and the taxi drivers who gave first responders free rides home.

Even Times Square will stop. At precisely 9:11 a.m., dozens of its famous digital billboards are expected to suspend their advertising and display only the time. It is part of the National Day of Service and Remembrance, an effort founded by 9/11 family members to transform memory into acts of service. For a place designed never to stop selling, flashing, moving or demanding our attention, even a brief moment of visual silence carries weight.

Then, as darkness falls, New Yorkers will look upward. The Tribute in Light will once again send two immense blue columns into the night sky from Lower Manhattan. Eighty-eight 7,000-watt xenon lights arranged in two 48-foot squares create beams that can be seen from as far as 60 miles away. They will shine from dusk Friday until dawn Saturday, recreating not the buildings themselves but their absence.

This year, the Tribute in Light becomes part of a national live broadcast for the first time. Cyndi Lauper, Lainey Wilson and Five For Fighting’s John Ondrasik are scheduled to perform, with David Muir, Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer hosting the 8 p.m. special from Lower Manhattan. Buildings throughout New York—including the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, David Geffen Hall, One Bryant Park, the Intrepid Museum, One World Observatory and PAC NYC—will also illuminate in blue.

Twenty-five years is a strange anniversary. It is long enough that an entire generation of adults was not alive on September 11, 2001. Children now entering college know the Twin Towers only from photographs and video. To them, September 11 belongs to history in the way Pearl Harbor once belonged to ours.

New York still carries the physical memory of that morning. Those of us who were here remember the missing-person posters. We remember the photographs taped to walls and fences. We remember the smoke. We remember the firehouses covered in flowers. We remember looking at strangers differently because, for one extraordinary period of time, strangers weren’t quite strangers anymore.

That may be the part of September 11 worth remembering most carefully 25 years later. The terrorists destroyed buildings and murdered thousands of innocent people. What they did not destroy was New York. For a time, they actually revealed it.

Tomorrow there will be 2,753 empty chairs in Bryant Park. There will be names spoken aloud at Ground Zero. There will be flowers, moments of silence and music. At 9:11 a.m., Times Square will stop selling us things. And after the sun goes down, two blue beams will rise into the Manhattan sky.

Twenty-five years later, New York is still keeping its promise.

We remember.

25th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony and livestream

American Symphony Orchestra: New York Resounds

September in New York is when the city snaps back to life, and the cabaret rooms and conversation stages are already filling with some seriously intriguing names. Sylvester Stallone, Heated Rivalry, Ariana DeBose, Linda Eder and Tony Danza are among those bringing star power, stories and music to the month ahead. From intimate performances to conversations that take us behind the celebrity curtain, September offers plenty of reasons to pull up a chair and listen. T2C takes a look at who’s talking, who’s singing and where you’ll want to be.

54 Below: 254 West 54 St. 9/8 – 9: Claybourne Elder: Can I Tell You Something?; 9/11-12; Charles Busch Sings Johnny Mercer; 9/13: Ben Franklin In Paris; 9/16: Michael Cerveris: The Other Part; 9/18 -19: Ute Lemper: Celebrating Marlene Dietrich’s 125th Birthday; 9/22: Seth Sikes with Tedd Firth: Together at Last! Feat. Marilyn Maye; 9/23 and 27: Linda Eder; 9/24 and  26: Orfeh: Unbound and 9/29 – 30: Jeanna de Waal: Songs I Love to Sing.

92 Street Y: 1395 Lexington Ave. 9/9: Jaclyn Smith in Conversation: Beyond Charlie’s Angels; 9/17: STARZ’s Outlander: Blood of my Blood; 9/18: Cabaret Conversations: Lindsay Mendez; 9/23: StarTalk Live! with Neil deGrasse Tyson: Lost in Space; 9/27: Gloria Steinem in Conversation with Katie Couric: An Unexpected Life; 9/28: CBS Sunday Morning at 92NY: Sylvester Stallone in Conversation with Tracy Smith: The Steps; 9/29: Harry Connick, Jr. in Conversation — Babe: Elaboratio and 9/30: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis: Ian Schrager.

Eliane Elias

Birdland Jazz: 315 West 44 St. Every Monday Jim Caruso’s Cast party; Every Monday and Tuesday: Vince Giordano leads The Nighthawks; Every Sunday Gabrielle Stravelli Trio;  9/ 15 – 19: Eliane Elias; 9/21: A Night With Nicole Henry and 9/28: Karen Mason.

Karen Mason Photo by Maryann Lopinto

Carnegie Hall: 881 7th Ave at 57th St.

Chelsea Table & Stage: Hilton Fashion District Hotel, 152 W 26th St. 9/9: An Evening With Mairéad; 9/13: Charlie Romo.

Dizzys Club Coca Cola: Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street. 9/4 -6: Ann Hampton Callaway I Get A Kick Out Of Cole.

Don’t Tell Mama: 343 W. 46 St. 9/9 and 16: Jeff Harnar: Blame It On My Youth; 9/10: Tanya Moberly: Repertoire With Sean Harkness; 9/24: Tanya Moberly: Repertoire With Ian Herman; 9/26: Steven Carl McCasland: Everybody Rise!

Laurie Beechman Theatre: at the West Bank Café: 407 West 42 St. 9/5:Lillias White Live At The Beechman; 9/8: Alice Ripley and John McDaniel; 9/12: Andrea McArdle’s Broadway On Demand; 9/16: Lorna Luft; 9/16: Lauren Marcus; 9/24: Lorna Dallas and 9/27:Donna McKechnie.

Donna McKechnie

Madame George: 45 West 45th: Broadway Night Mondays.

Ariana DeBose Photo by Genevieve Rafter Keddy

The Café Carlyle: 35 East 76 St. at Madison Ave. 9/8 – 19: Tony Danza: More Standards & Stories; 9/21 -26: Susanna Hoffs: and 9/29 – 10/3: Ariana DeBose.

Alicia Witt

The Cutting Room: 44 East 32nd St. 9/12: ALICIA WITT; 9/14: BROADWAY TAKES ON THE 80S; 9/17: BROADWAY SINGS ABBA

The DJango: 2 Avenue of the Americas. 9/18: Lee Taylor and 9/29: People of the Earth.

The Iridium: 1650 Broadway. 8/29: Papa Chubby

The Pierre Hotel, Two E Bar & Lounge: 2 E 61st St.

Sony Hall: 235 W 46th St. 9/21: Twin Peaks: A Conversation with the Stars

The Triad: 158 W. 72 St. Street. 9/5L: The Dozen Divas Show

The Town Hall: 123 W. 43 St. 9/27: Roger Daltrey A Great Night Out; 9/28: Stagedoor 50: A One-Night-Only Concert celebrating 50 Years of Stagedoor Manor Benefiting the Entertainment Community Fund and 9/29:  Heated Rivalry! Release