News · 2026-10-03

Amazon reportedly explores moving $8 billion of Nvidia chips into an investor vehicle and leasing them back

Amazon has held talks with investors about moving about $8 billion worth of Nvidia Grace Blackwell AI chips into a separate investment vehicle that would borrow from outside investors, buy the chips, and lease them back to Amazon, the Financial Times reported on October 2. Reuters carried the report. Amazon has not confirmed the plan, and no deal has been announced.

Key facts

• Size: roughly $8 billion of chips, according to the FT's reporting as carried by Reuters.
• When: reported October 2, 2026; the talks were described as recent and exploratory.
• What: thousands of Grace Blackwell chips in more than a dozen US data centers across five states, including Nevada and Virginia, with an equity stake of up to 10 percent possibly offered in the vehicle.
• Primary sources: the Financial Times report and Reuters' account of it.

AI chips are the most expensive thing in a modern data center, and the biggest cloud companies are buying them at a pace that strains even their cash flow. Amazon's own second-quarter results showed free cash flow of minus $7.6 billion over the trailing twelve months, driven mainly by a $66.1 billion year-on-year jump in spending on property and equipment that Amazon said primarily reflected investment in AI. Its quarterly filing reported $96.3 billion of capital spending in the first half of 2026 and said the company expected additional financing activity this year.

How the structure would work

According to Reuters, the FT reported that the chips "were bought or leased by Amazon" and would move into a special-purpose vehicle, a standalone company created for one deal. That vehicle "would tap outside investors through debt issuance," and Amazon would "lease the advanced AI chips back." The FT said this would let Amazon take "a more asset-light approach to its balance sheet."

The idea is common in other industries. Airlines routinely sell planes to leasing companies and rent them back, freeing up cash while keeping the planes flying. Here, Amazon would keep running the chips in its data centers, while investors would own them, take on part of the risk that they lose value, and collect lease payments.

That depreciation risk is real. Amazon's 2025 annual report shortened the expected useful life of some servers and networking gear from six years to five because of faster technology development, especially in AI, adding $1.4 billion to 2025 depreciation expense. Ground Truth has reported on that tension before, including whether AI revenue now covers the data-center depreciation bill.

Why it matters

If it happens, the deal would be a sign that the AI buildout is moving from being paid for mostly out of big companies' own pockets toward being financed by outside debt investors, as railways, telecom networks and aircraft fleets were before. That spreads the cost, and it also spreads the risk if chips age faster or earn less than expected. It sits alongside Amazon's August plan with Nvidia for two million additional GPUs on AWS in 2027 and 2028, which shows the company is still adding capacity.

The caveat

This is reporting about exploratory talks, not an announced transaction. The FT article itself could not be opened for this story; the details come from Reuters' account of it. No investors, lenders, lease terms, guarantees or accounting treatment have been reported, and setting up a separate vehicle does not on its own move the chips off Amazon's books. Amazon and Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters. Amazon still reported $123 billion of cash and marketable securities at the end of June, so the reporting does not show it needs the deal. Discussion on Hacker News focused on accounting optics and how fast these chips become obsolete.

Primary source, verified: read the paper →

Ground Truth. (2026, October 3). Amazon reportedly explores moving $8 billion of Nvidia chips into an investor vehicle and leasing them back. Ground Truth. https://groundtruth.day/news/amazon-reportedly-explores-selling-8-billion-of-nvidia-chips-and-leasing-them-back.html

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  author = {{Ground Truth}},
  year   = {2026},
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  url    = {https://groundtruth.day/news/amazon-reportedly-explores-selling-8-billion-of-nvidia-chips-and-leasing-them-back.html}
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Topics: industry · finance · amazon · nvidia · compute · data-centers