Amazon is exploring a special-purpose vehicle to finance $8 billion in Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips for U.S. data centers, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Under the proposed structure, an outside investor vehicle would purchase the chips and lease them back to Amazon. The arrangement keeps the $8 billion expenditure off Amazon's balance sheet as owned assets—lowering reported capital intensity—while Amazon retains operational control.
The SPV would fund the purchase primarily through debt collateralized by the chips themselves, creating a novel asset-backed security for institutional investors. Amazon is also discussing offering the SPV investors an equity stake of up to 10 percent to attract additional capital.
From a credit perspective, the economics are unchanged. Debt investors would evaluate the bonds based on Amazon's creditworthiness and the residual value of Grace Blackwell hardware. Analysts will treat the long-term lease obligations as real claims on Amazon's cash flow, regardless of balance-sheet treatment.
The move reflects how capital-intensive AI infrastructure is forcing major cloud providers to innovate their financing playbooks. Building out large-scale GPU capacity requires upfront spending that strains even balance sheets with Amazon's scale and cash generation. A lease structure preserves cash, improves asset turnover ratios, and creates a secondary market for AI infrastructure debt—all without changing the underlying economics of the capex commitment.
The discussions are ongoing as Amazon weighs the structure that best optimizes its capital allocation and infrastructure buildout timeline.
