Nvidia to lease back GPUs from cloud partner in multiyear deal

Nvidia has struck what industry reports describe as a multiyear arrangement to lease back thousands of its own graphics processing units that had been sold to a cloud startup in which it holds an ownership stake, a move that would funnel as much as roughly 1.5 billion back to the chipmaker and provide it with sizeable on‑premises capacity for internal research. The deal, disclosed in recent reporting, involves a four‑year lease for about 10,000 high‑end GPUs valued at roughly 1.3 billion and a separate agreement for about 8,000 older units worth roughly 200 million, according to people familiar with the terms.

Reports say the leased servers, which the cloud firm had originally purchased from Nvidia, will be used by Nvidia researchers rather than being resold or routed through major cloud platforms. The arrangement follows a similar pattern the company executed with another GPU‑focused cloud provider before that firm’s initial public offering. Nvidia has also increased direct equity stakes in a small number of cloud specialists that operate large fleets of its chips, a strategy company insiders and analysts say is designed to broaden demand beyond the hyperscale cloud providers...