Nvidia pauses AI cloud financing deals amid control, antitrust concerns

Nvidia has paused parts of its AI cloud financing initiative, a program that offered credit support to AI cloud providers in exchange for a share of revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The AI Compute Partnership was designed for smaller clouds that struggle to finance infrastructure. Nvidia agreed to rent back computing capacity from customers if they couldn’t sell it themselves, and to take a portion of revenue generated from Nvidia-powered capacity. Reuters reported customers were told chips could only be rented to approved buyers, raising control and potential antitrust worries. Nvidia stepped back last week, less than two months after launching the program, though it said the model remains in place. Nvidia recently posted record results and forecast about $108 billion in revenue for next quarter.