Nvidia pauses revenue-sharing deals with AI cloud companies, WSJ reports

Aug 27 (Reuters) - Nvidia has paused some ‌deals that were ​part of ​its new financing initiative that offered credit support to AI cloud companies in exchange for a share of revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people ‌familiar with the matter.

The chip giant stepped back from the program last week, ⁠the Journal said, adding that it could still revamp the initiative later or fold it into another program.

"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," an Nvidia spokesperson said.

The reported move comes less than two months after Nvidia announced ​the program, designed to support financing needs at small AI cloud firms.

Nvidia had sought to rent compute capacity back from cloud customers if they were unable to sell it, providing them with ⁠a guaranteed buyer and making it easier for the firms to borrow the capital needed to fund their purchases of Nvidia's AI ​chips.

Under the model, Nvidia would earn revenue on the sale of the hardware itself and then a share of its customers' cloud revenues derived from Nvidia-powered ​capacity.

Nvidia said in its earnings call this week that ‌the model had the potential to drive billions in revenue over the medium- to long-term.

But investor scrutiny has mounted in recent months as Nvidia pumps money ⁠back into the AI ecosystem, stoking fears over its role in so-called circular deals that could artificially inflate demand.

The company this month helped arrange $500 billion in financing from major U.S. financial institutions for its customers, and also ⁠agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease a massive data center.

The Journal reported that some Nvidia ​employees expressed concerns to current and potential customers that the initiative could draw antitrust scrutiny, and said there are sensitivities around the extent to which Nvidia can dictate how its customers do business.

In the early weeks of the ‌program, Nvidia irked some potential partners with the extent of control it sought, the report said.

Nvidia told some cloud providers they could only rent its ‌chips out to approved customers and signaled it preferred the capacity be distributed among multiple smaller firms rather ⁠than one large customer, the report added.

Under ‌the proposed deals, Nvidia would receive ​50% of any revenue cloud providers earned through its chips beyond a certain threshold, the Journal said.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo and ‌Joyjeet Das)

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