Amazon Explores $8B Nvidia Chip Sale and Leaseback as AI Infrastructure Costs Climb

Amazon (AMZN) is seeking to move about $8 billion of advanced Nvidia (NVDA) chips into a new vehicle backed by outside investors, the Financial Times reported Friday, according to Reuters. Amazon has held talks to gauge interest in placing thousands of Grace Blackwell chips, installed in more than a dozen US data centers across five states, into a special-purpose vehicle. Amazon would then lease the chips back, the vehicle would raise money through debt, and Amazon plans to offer an equity stake of up to 10%.

The structure reflects the scale of Amazon's AI buildout. Reuters said the deal could let Amazon adopt a more asset-light approach to its balance sheet. Investing.com reported that Amazon plans to invest over $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, mostly for AWS chip purchases and data center construction. Stocktwits noted that Amazon's trailing 12-month free cash flow turned negative at $7.6 billion as of the second quarter, largely because property and equipment purchases rose $66.1 billion year over year.

MarketWatch's coverage paired the SPV report with Amazon hiking chip-rental prices. The latest change confirmed in available sources took effect July 1: AWS raised EC2 Capacity Block prices for Nvidia GPU instances by approximately 20%, following a roughly 15% increase announced in January, according to AI Weekly. The Information reported that Capacity Blocks using Amazon's Trainium chips were excluded, and Amazon said pricing is updated periodically based on supply and demand.

The talks remain exploratory, and Amazon and Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters. Points to watch include whether investor demand supports a final deal at the reported size, how the leaseback would appear in Amazon's future filings, and whether other large cloud operators pursue similar financing. Amazon shares edged 0.6% higher in premarket trading Friday, according to Stocktwits.