❯ Amazon discusses moving $8 billion of Nvidia chips into an SPV and leasing them back to expand its data centers

Sell, then lease backAccording to the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, Amazon has held talks with investors about moving about $8 billion of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips into a special purpose vehicle (SPV), then leasing them back for its US data centers. The deal is still under discussion and terms are not final.

SPVs are becoming standardAn SPV is a standalone company set up for one deal: investors fund the chip purchase and earn back their money through rent, so the chips need not sit entirely on Amazon’s balance sheet. The structure has spread quickly in AI, with Anthropic and xAI among those using similar setups. The Information reported the same day that data center financing is getting more expensive and some banks are becoming more selective.

Better cash flow, years of rentThis lets Amazon turn a large one-time capital outlay into periodic rent, easing near-term cash pressure. The trade-off is years of lease payments on chips that depreciate quickly, with investors demanding higher returns. That even cash-rich Amazon is using the structure shows AI buildouts now exceed what companies want to fund from their own cash.

▪ SIGNALWhen the richest cloud giant starts moving chips off its balance sheet, the bottleneck in AI infrastructure has shifted from getting chips to making the financing math work.