Nvidia has paused its revenue-sharing financing program with AI cloud providers, according to The Wall Street Journal and crypto market commentary from Matthew Sigel. The decision stems from rising antitrust concerns and internal warnings that the initiative could attract regulatory scrutiny.
The program, launched less than two months ago, was designed to help small AI cloud companies access capital to buy Nvidia chips. In exchange, Nvidia would receive a share of cloud revenue generated by those chips. Under the deals, Nvidia would have taken 50% of cloud revenue earned beyond a certain threshold. The company also would have bought back unused compute capacity if customers could not sell it themselves, giving cloud firms a guaranteed buyer and making it easier for them to borrow money.
However, some Nvidia employees raised concerns to current and potential customers that the initiative could draw antitrust attention. The Journal reported that Nvidia had told cloud providers they could only rent chips to approved customers and pushed for capacity to be spread across multiple smaller firms rather than one large client, prompting pushback from some partners.
On its earnings call this week, Nvidia said the model had potential to drive billions in revenue over the medium to long term. But investor scrutiny has been building as Nvidia increases its financial footprint across the AI ecosystem. Critics have raised the possibility of circular deals that could artificially inflate demand for Nvidia chips. This month, Nvidia helped arrange $500 billion in financing from major U.S. financial institutions for customers and agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease a large data center.
An Nvidia spokesperson said: “The new business model that opens up compute access to the fast-growing AI ecosystem is still in place and continues to evolve due to high demand.” Nvidia has not publicly confirmed the pause beyond that statement. The stock was trading around its recent levels when the news broke, with no significant price movement as investors awaited more clarity on regulatory implications.
