Amazon explores $8bn Nvidia Grace Blackwell SPV to lease chips back from investors

What's the deal? The Financial Times reports that Amazon has been discussing a special-purpose vehicle to sell about $8bn of advanced Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips to outside investors and lease them back — a way to lighten the balance sheet while keeping the GPUs in AWS data centres. Talks in recent weeks remain ongoing and may change; Amazon declined to comment.

How it would work. The SPV would issue debt to investors. Those investors expect an investment-grade rating tied to Amazon's double-A credit, which could open the structure to insurers and pension funds. Amazon is said to be offering up to a 10% equity stake in the vehicle while retaining no ownership itself. The chips cover thousands of units across more than a dozen US data centres in five states, including Nevada and Virginia.

Context. Amazon expects about $220bn of capex this year, mostly AWS chips and AI data centres. Grace Blackwell is among Nvidia's most advanced silicon but is due to be superseded by Vera Rubin; Amazon argues each semiconductor generation should last at least five years. The FT frames the talks inside a wider pattern of residual-value guarantees and off-balance-sheet structures that can obscure retained risk — alongside GPU-backed financing used by CoreWeave and Nvidia's offer to backstop up to $125bn within a larger financing platform.

Source: Financial Times — Amazon seeks to offload $8bn of Nvidia chips to investors (Michelle Chan, Rafe Rosner-Uddin)