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

Nvidia has suspended certain revenue-sharing agreements with AI cloud companies, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on August 27th. According to sources familiar with the matter, this pause occurred following employee concerns that the initiative could attract antitrust scrutiny. Despite the pause, Nvidia's chip division continues to offer compute access to the rapidly growing AI ecosystem.

The company's spokesperson confirmed that the new financing model remains active and subject to evolution due to high demand. This initiative, launched in July, aimed to assist AI cloud firms in financing the purchase of Nvidia's expensive chips while allowing Nvidia to rent compute capacity back, earning a share of the customers' cloud revenues.

However, the program faced criticism from some potential partners due to Nvidia's extensive control measures, including restrictions on chip rental to approved customers and a preference for distribution among multiple smaller AI firms.