Amazon is reportedly exploring a deal to move about $8 billion of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips off its balance sheet through a special-purpose vehicle, then lease the hardware back. The talks are exploratory, and neither company has confirmed them.
Amazon is weighing a structure that would shift roughly $8 billion worth of Nvidia's top-end chips off its books while keeping the hardware running exactly where it sits today. The chips would no longer belong to Amazon, even though they would continue operating in Amazon's data centers.
How the structure would work
The plan centers on a special-purpose vehicle, or SPV. Amazon would transfer ownership of the Nvidia Grace Blackwell AI chips to the SPV, then lease the hardware back so operations continue as before. The chips are not warehoused equipment awaiting a deal — they are already installed in more than a dozen US data centers across at least five states, including Nevada and Virginia.
Outside investors would fund the SPV, reportedly mostly through debt. They could also receive a 10% equity stake in the venture, adding upside beyond interest payments.
None of this is final: the talks are exploratory, no terms have been settled, and neither Amazon nor Nvidia has commented publicly. The Financial Times reported the talks first, with Bloomberg and Reuters following.
Why Amazon would want this
Amazon has been buying Nvidia chips at scale. The company committed to purchasing more than 1 million Nvidia GPUs by March 2026, then ordered another 2 million in August 2026, pushing its 2026 orders above 3 million GPUs. An SPV would change that math: Amazon could keep deploying chips without carrying all of them as owned assets, moving toward an asset-light model that uses the hardware without bearing its full upfront cost.
What it means for each side
For Amazon, the appeal is flexibility — moving $8 billion in chips into an SPV would ease near-term capital spending pressure. For outside investors, the deal offers a different kind of AI exposure.
Rather than buying Amazon or Nvidia stock, they would fund the hardware directly, mostly as lenders, with the potential equity stake adding some upside. Their returns would depend on Amazon continuing to lease the chips, and the deal remains a conversation, with no terms finalized and no confirmation from either company.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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