Amazon in talks on $8 billion Grace Blackwell chip leaseback

The move comes as Amazon's spending has climbed sharply. Amazon spent $54.2 billion on capital projects in the second quarter, 68% more than a year earlier, and Andy Jassy committed to roughly $200 billion in spending for 2026. Free cash flow over the past 12 months turned negative at -$7.6 billion, and long-term debt rose to $119.1 billion from $65.6 billion a year earlier.

Nvidia is building similar financing structures of its own. Nvidia reported $279 billion in supply commitments and guarantee obligations limited at $108.5 billion for AI cloud and data center partners, and it signed up six asset managers and banks to raise more than $500 billion of outside capital for AI infrastructure. Management said: "We know some will call this circular financing." Nvidia expects the AI labs it supports to account for roughly a quarter of its business next year.

The deal illustrates a split: Amazon gets cash and keeps the early, profitable years of the chips, while lenders take on the later years when the collateral may be worth less. On the July earnings call, Jassy said servers take "a little less than three years" to break even and last at least five to six years. Demand for computing power remains intense, with Nvidia saying it can supply about 70% of what customers want. Whether this becomes a template appears to hinge on the interest rate lenders demand and whether peers copy the structure, a signal the article suggests could surface within two quarters.