Telecom's ugliest chapter was vendor financing: Lucent lent customers ~$8.1 B, Nortel ~$3.1 B, Cisco ~$2.4 B – loans booked as revenue until fraud and defaults surfaced together. The AI rhyme shows, so far, NVIDIA’s stakes sit as investments, not revenue, so the historic kill‑mechanism doesn’t clearly transfer. The real test remains disclosure quality, not vibe.