Oct 2 (Reuters) - Amazon is seeking to offload about $8 billion of advanced Nvidia chips to investors through a new vehicle to strengthen its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
In recent weeks,Amazon has held talks with investors to gauge interest in the deal that would move thousands of Grace Blackwell chips it is installing in US datacentres into a special-purpose vehicle, the report said.
The cloud giant will then lease the advanced AI chips back from the SPV, which would tap outside investors through debt issuance, the FT said, adding that the company could adopt a more asset-light approach to its balance sheet by unloading the expensive semiconductors to investors.
Amazon plans to offer an equity stake of up to 10% in the vehicle, the newspaper said.
The chips in the proposed deal were bought or leased by Amazon. They are installed in more than a dozen US data centres across five states, including Nevada and Virginia, thereport said.
Amazon and Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters for comment outside regular business hours.
(Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
