Amazon is hiking microchip rental prices.
In a sign of the financing crunch facing the hyperscalers backing the AI revolution, Amazon has announced it is raising prices on how much it charges to rent high-performance microchips as it reportedly is going to sell and then lease back Nvidia chips.
Amazon (AMZN) on Friday said it is raising prices, by about 15%, starting next week, for what's called EC2 Capacity Blocks, which provide access to computing power on Nvidia chips ranging from the older A100 to the newer, more high-performance B300.
Amazon increased some rental prices in July as well, but it hasn't hiked prices on the A100 since January.
Separately, Amazon is looking to offload about $8 billion of advanced Nvidia (NVDA) chips to external investors, with the idea of then leasing it back, according to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the matter.
Amazon did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Amazon shares rose 1% in premarket trade. The stock is up 8% this year.
Amazon has said it plans to spend $220 billion on capital expenditure this year, almost double what it spent in 2025. CEO Andy Jassy said after the second-quarter results, even with the $220 billion it's spending, demand outstrips supply.
"We will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026. And I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027 too. In fact, the demand we already have for 2028 is striking."
The Amazon price hikes on the older chips does puncture the argument laid out by some investors, like Michael Burry, that the company is not properly depreciating its microchip assets.
-Steve Goldstein