THE CRUNCH
Amazon Web Services has taken delivery of roughly $5 billion of Nvidia GB300 racks in August alone, with a further $3 billion of hardware accepted each month since, according to an email seen by Business Insider. The snag: AWS does not yet have enough energy to power the kit it has already paid for.
That mismatch is reportedly straining the company's finances. AWS's free cash flow fell from $53 billion in Q2 2024 to $7.6 billion in Q2 2026, and a leaked recording of an internal staff meeting last month suggests it has since gone negative. In the recording, AWS CFO John Felton joked to AI infrastructure lead Prasad Kalyanaraman: "You've taken us free cash flow negative as a company, so congratulations."
Normally AWS pays for Nvidia's GPU racks only once they are installed. With no clear installation date, it has introduced an "Early Rack Receipt" process instead, meaning cash sits tied up in hardware it cannot use until power arrives.
The spending continues regardless. AWS revenue grew 37% year-over-year to $42.2 billion in the quarter ending in July, its fastest growth in 18 quarters, and CEO Andy Jassy has called AI a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity", with almost $200 billion earmarked for infrastructure. In the near term, though, much of that investment may be sitting idle waiting for electricity.