AMD's AI chips to be used as debt collateral in $300 million loan, report says — Cloud startup to use chips in Ohio datacenter

AMD Instinct GPUs in a rack. — (Image credit: Getty Images)

AMD's AI chips will be used as debt collateral in a deal to financially support a cloud startup buying the company's processors, The Information reports. It's the first known occurrence of the practice with AMD's chips, creating a circular deal similar to those that Nvidia has been making to increase GPU sales.

The $300 million loan from Goldman Sachs to the cloud startup Crusoe will be used to buy AMD's AI chips (the reporting doesn't specify which chip will be used, though presumably it will be a member of the Instinct MI450 series). Those chips will be used in a datacenter in Ohio.

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Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin — (Image credit: Microsoft)

AMD is set to effectively serve as guarantor for the deal, according to the report, by agreeing to rent the chips from Crusoe if the company can't find other willing customers, sources close to the deal told The Information. In the meantime, AMD will get to say it has $300 million in AI chip sales.

Crusoe is a cloud startup that claims to build data centers with cleaner energy than other companies, with more due diligence on "sites with clean, scalable power already in place."

This is far from AMD's first major AI deal. Last year, OpenAI secured up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPU compute in a deal that could see the ChatGPT creator take a significant stake in AMD. In December, AMD and HPE entered into an agreement that will bring the AMD Helios rack-scale AI architecture into HPE’s product portfolio.

AMD is following Nvidia in using chips as collateral. Nvidia famously put up H100 GPUs as collateral to back CoreWeave's $2.3 billion loan by Magnetar Capital and Blackstone. These circular deals let the companies make big claims about how many chips they've sold and where they're deployed without startups seeing much of the actual risk.

AMD has denied reports that its next-generation MI455X accelerators may be delayed in production. Those are set for the second half of 2026. We've reached out to AMD for comment.

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Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

4 Comments Comment from the forums

artk2219

We are building a house of cards, and of course we will have to act surprised when it all comes tumbling down.
Reply
umeng2002_2

This is like borrowing money against a sandwich.
Reply
GenericUsername109

Lending money against rapidly depreciating collateral. Either they apply a huge haircut on the value (50%+) or this is peak banking sector degeneracy.
Reply
greenreaper

GenericUsername109 said:
Lending money against rapidly depreciating collateral. Either they apply a huge haircut on the value (50%+) or this is peak banking sector degeneracy.
As the piece highlights, this allows AMD to 'legitimately' claim $300m AI revenue, and so prop their stock up.
Reply