Amazon explores $8B deal to shift Nvidia chips off its balance sheet

Amazon is exploring a deal that would move about $8 billion worth of Nvidia’s top-end chips off its balance sheet. The chips would keep running in Amazon’s data centers. They just wouldn’t belong to Amazon anymore.

How the structure would work

The plan centers on a special-purpose vehicle, or SPV. Amazon would transfer ownership of approximately $8 billion in Nvidia Grace Blackwell AI chips to the SPV. It would then lease the hardware back, so its operations would carry on as before.

The hardware is not sitting in a warehouse waiting for a buyer. The chips are already installed in more than a dozen US data centers across at least five states, including Nevada and Virginia.

Outside investors would supply the money for the SPV. Most of that funding would reportedly come through debt. Investors could also receive a 10% equity stake in the venture, giving them some 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 on the discussions. The Financial Times reported the talks first, with Bloomberg and Reuters following.

Why Amazon would want this

Amazon has been buying a lot of them. According to the research findings, the company committed to purchasing more than 1 million Nvidia GPUs by March 2026. It then ordered another 2 million in August 2026, bringing its 2026 orders above 3 million GPUs.

An SPV changes that math. Amazon could keep deploying chips without carrying all of them as owned assets. The goal is an asset-light model, where the company uses the hardware without bearing the full upfront cost.

What this means

For Amazon, the main 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 exposure to AI. Rather than buying Amazon or Nvidia stock, they would fund the hardware directly, mostly as lenders. A potential 10% equity stake adds some upside. Their returns would depend on Amazon continuing to lease the chips.

For now, the deal is still a conversation. No terms are final, and neither company has confirmed anything.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.