Amazon seeks to offload billions of Nvidia chips to investors: report
Facing soaring AI infrastructure costs, the cloud giant explores innovative financing vehicles to lease back advanced hardware and protect its balance sheet
Amazon is in talks with external investors to offload approximately $8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia hardware through a specialized financing vehicle, aiming to shield its balance sheet from soaring artificial intelligence infrastructure costs.
In recent weeks,the e-commerce and cloud giant has held talks with investors to gauge interest in the deal that would move thousands of Grace Blackwell chips it is installing in US data centres into a special-purpose vehicle, the Financial Times report said.
The proposed arrangement would transfer thousands of cutting-edge Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips—currently installed across more than a dozen U.S. data centers in states including Virginia and Nevada—into a special-purpose vehicle (SPV).
Under the structure of the deal, the cloud giant would subsequently lease the high-performance AI semiconductors back from the SPV, which would fund itself partly through debt issuance while offering outside investors an equity stake of up to 10%.
The report said chips in the proposed deal were bought or leased by Amazon-are installed in more than a dozen US data centres across five states, including Nevada and Virginia.
The move highlights a broader trend among major tech "hyperscalers" seeking creative, asset-light strategies to manage unprecedented capital expenditures.
With Amazon projecting capital outlays exceeding $200 billion largely to drive its cloud and AI infrastructure expansion, shifting expensive hardware portfolios to third-party vehicles offers a way to maintain rapid scaling without overextending internal balance sheets.
