Amazon is exploring a deal to shift about $8 billion of Nvidia chips off its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported. The talks are exploratory and no deal has been announced.

Under the plan, thousands of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips would be transferred into a special-purpose vehicle backed by outside investors. Amazon would then lease the chips back for its data centres.

The chips are already installed across more than a dozen US data centres in five states, including Nevada and Virginia. The vehicle would raise money through debt, and Amazon may offer outside investors an equity stake of up to 10 per cent. Amazon itself would hold no ownership.

The appeal is simple. AI hardware has become enormously expensive. Shifting ownership to investors lets Amazon keep building computing capacity without carrying the full cost on its books.

Amazon plans about $220 billion in capital spending this year, most of it for AWS data centres and semiconductors.