Amazon Warehouses Billions in Nvidia GB300 Racks as Data Centers Lack Power to Boot Them

Amazon's cloud unit is stockpiling billions of dollars of Nvidia's latest GB300 racks in staging warehouses because its target data centers have space for the hardware but not enough power to run it, according to internal documents and a staff meeting recording obtained by Business Insider. AWS expected to take delivery of about $5 billion in GB300 racks in August alone and roughly $3 billion per month thereafter, the documents show. CFO John Felton told AI infrastructure chief Prasad Kalyanaraman at a September staff meeting that he had turned the company's free cash flow negative, a characterization Kalyanaraman did not dispute, saying it would likely stay negative for several years. Amazon reported trailing-12-month free cash flow of negative $7.6 billion in its July second-quarter results, its first negative reading in years. Idle racks produce no computing capacity, keeping GPU rental prices elevated. Under a new "Early Rack Receipt" process, Amazon takes ownership before racks reach data centers, paying ahead of installation to secure hardware amid fierce competition.