GPU Financing Options Compared: What Each Route Underwrites
Summary
An operator has five main GPU financing options: a GPU-secured term loan held in a special-purpose vehicle (SPV), equipment finance, a finance or operating lease, vendor or OEM financing and guarantees, and an investment-grade-rated facility. An SPV is a separate company that holds the GPUs and their revenue. Equipment finance also covers refinancing GPUs already deployed, and leases include sale-leasebacks. Each route repays from a different source: the operator's balance sheet, the hardware's value or the offtake contract, under which a customer buys the operator's compute.
Choose a term loan or equipment finance if you want to own the GPUs and your offtake contract can carry the debt service. Choose a lease if a lessor owning the hardware suits your balance sheet. Vendor financing works as a bridge to permanent debt or as support for other debt. Rated facilities fit only deployments contracted to highly rated counterparties for most of the debt's life.
Comparison Table
The six routes differ most on which source of repayment they price and who owns the GPUs. Cost is left out, because disclosed deals differ too much in customer credit, tenor and structure to compare on price.
| Route | What is underwritten | Who owns the GPUs | Tenor basis | What the operator brings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU-secured term loan in an SPV | Offtake contract and hardware value | Operator, through the SPV | Matched to the offtake contract | Equity, offtake contract, colocation, purchase order |
| Equipment finance and refinancing | Hardware value, supported by customer revenue | Operator | Set by the equipment and its revenue | Equity or GPUs already deployed, revenue record |
| Finance or operating lease | Lessee's balance sheet and payment record | Lessor, until any purchase option | Lease schedule (see GPU loan vs lease) | Credit record, lease payments |
| Sale-leaseback | Lessee's balance sheet and hardware value | Buyer-lessor, after transfer | Lease schedule | GPUs the operator already owns |
| Vendor or OEM financing and guarantees | Vendor relationship and the hardware order | Lessor or operator, by structure | Short initial term, often a bridge | Hardware order with the vendor |
| Investment-grade-rated facility | Contracts with highly rated counterparties | Operator, through an SPV | Amortizes within the contract term | Highly rated customers, large scale |
What Each Option Underwrites
Each route prices a different source of repayment: the borrower's balance sheet, the hardware's value or the offtake contract. Most GPU deals combine all three, but one usually carries the weight, and that choice shapes the tenor, the ownership and what you bring to the deal.
Read the same deployment through each route and the first question changes. A lessor asks whether you can pay the rent, and an equipment lender asks what the servers would sell for. A contract-based lender asks whether the customer's payments cover debt service.
GPU-secured term loan in an SPV
A GPU-secured term loan places the deployment in an SPV that holds the GPUs, the offtake contracts and the revenue accounts, ring-fencing it from the parent company. Lenders hold a first-priority claim on the GPUs, contracts and revenue, so repayment rests on the contract and the hardware it runs on.
Nscale's S-1, filed in September 2026, discloses a Macquarie Iceland facility of $331.9 million that matures 46 months from first utilization. Most deals in this segment are far smaller. The Compute Middle Market tracker counts GPU-backed financings of $500 million or less and records 46 since January 2023. They total $5.04 billion, with a median of $44.2 million (data as of November 3, 2026).
That median deal is where capital is thinnest. USD.AI's July 2026 analysis of the market found that deals between $50 million and $250 million have few dedicated capital providers.
Equipment finance and refinancing deployed GPUs
Equipment finance companies lend against the servers themselves, usually with customer revenue in support, and the same route refinances GPUs already earning. In October 2026, IREN and Wingspire Equipment Finance announced a $363 million equipment financing that "refinanced recently acquired, revenue-generating AI compute infrastructure." Six lenders took part, with anchor and major commitments from Eldridge and Silver Point, and the companies disclosed no rate or tenor.
The route also funds new servers. In August 2026, Wingspire announced a $140 million financing of high-density GPU servers for an unnamed private-equity-backed GPU cloud provider.
Refinancing is the less obvious use, and in our view an underused one. It frees capital tied up in a live cluster while the GPUs keep serving customers. An operator that paid for its first deployment with equity can recover part of that equity and put it into the next one.
Leases and sale-leasebacks
In a lease the lessor owns the GPUs and the operator pays rent over a schedule, so the lessor prices the lessee's ability to pay. In October 2026, SpaceX announced a committed master finance lease of roughly $40 billion for GPUs and related equipment, led by Apollo and Goldman Sachs. The lessor is an Apollo-managed entity, and the lease covers NVIDIA Vera Rubin chips. It is expected to close before year-end 2026, with schedules starting on delivery in the first half of 2027, and the 8-K puts each at about five to five and a quarter years.
Boost Run entered 34 GPU-server finance leases in the first half of 2026, on terms of 30–36 months. Its 10-Q puts undiscounted fixed lease payments at $55.7 million for the 12 first-quarter leases and $240.2 million for the 22 second-quarter leases.
In a sale-leaseback, the operator sells GPUs it owns and leases them back. SpaceX's third-quarter 10-Q says its Valor equipment transactions "were deemed to be a failed sale-leaseback transaction," so they were accounted for as a financing. The GPU loan vs lease article linked in the table covers the wider trade-off.
Vendor and OEM financing and guarantees
Vendors support financing in two ways: funding leases directly and guaranteeing other parties' obligations. Nscale's S-1 describes two framework agreements with Dell Financial Services signed in April 2026. As of September 4, 2026, 40 payment schedules carried about $2.54 billion of initial-term rent on three- or four-month initial terms, which makes them a bridge to longer debt.
AMD's 10-Q for the quarter ended September 26, 2026 discloses guarantees of commercial partners' lease and debt obligations. Maximum potential future payments are $8.5 billion, terms run up to 15 years and AMD has paid nothing to date. Separately, AMD reports about $6.2 billion of commitments to buy GPU compute capacity from cloud providers, a purchase commitment distinct from the guarantees.
NVIDIA disclosed in an August 2026 8-K residual-value guaranties, capped at $105 billion, that support OpenAI's data center leases with SB Energy. The guaranties relate to data center leases for land, power and shell capacity of about 4.25 GW of IT load, so they support site leases, a different obligation from GPU debt.
Investment-grade-rated facilities
In our view, investment-grade ratings on GPU debt rest on the counterparty and a tenor that matches the contract, with the GPUs in a supporting role. In October 2026, Morningstar DBRS rated Lambda Compute I LLC's $1.008 billion senior secured delayed-draw term loan A (low). The rating rests on take-or-pay contracts with two highly rated counterparties.
The loan amortizes at a minimum 1.20x debt service coverage ratio (DSCR, the cash available for debt service divided by the debt service due). It matures about six years after close, and DBRS found "no exposure to re-leasing risk."
Who Owns the GPUs
Loans and equipment finance leave ownership with the operator or its SPV, while a lease leaves it with the lessor until any purchase option is exercised. A sale-leaseback transfers ownership to the buyer and leases the GPUs back to the operator.
Ownership decides who keeps the residual value once the debt is repaid and whose balance sheet carries the asset. An operator that owns its GPUs keeps whatever value remains at the end of the term and can refinance them or redeploy them to a new customer. A lessee hands that value to the lessor or pays for it through a purchase option.
Accounting treatment depends on the structure, as the SpaceX sale-leaseback shows. Confirm how any lease or sale-leaseback will be treated with your accountant before you sign.
Tenor and the Offtake Contract
Lenders and rating agencies look for debt tenor that fits inside the offtake contract, as the DBRS rating on Lambda Compute I, with its take-or-pay contracts and six-year maturity, shows. When the contract runs as long as the debt, the customer's payments retire the loan. When it ends first, the remaining balance depends on finding a new customer at whatever price the market then pays, and that gap is re-leasing risk.
The routes sit at different points on that scale. Boost Run's lease schedules run 30–36 months and SpaceX's about five years. Nscale's Dell schedules carry three- or four-month initial terms, the profile of a bridge.
On-demand revenue can still support financing, priced for its shorter commitment. For the contract side of the deal, read how offtake agreements work.
What the Operator Must Bring
Every route asks for much the same packet, and the offtake contract and the equity carry the most weight. Expect to provide:
- Hardware purchase order. It fixes the cost of the deployment and the collateral the financing sizes against.
- Equity contribution. Debt rarely covers the whole cost, so lenders want the operator's own capital at risk.
- Colocation agreement. Lenders look for a Tier III or Tier IV site with the power and cooling the servers need.
- Offtake contract or on-demand revenue. A signed contract, or documented on-demand revenue, shows how the debt gets repaid.
- Financial statements. They show the operator's track record and its ability to fund operations.
- Ownership chart. It shows who owns the operator and the SPV, which lenders need for their security.
- AML/KYC documents. Anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer checks cover the operator and its owners.
The coverage test matters as much as the documents. A minimum DSCR of 1.15x, tested quarterly on cash collected, is the published coverage test in USD.AI's underwriting standards. The rated Lambda deal amortizes at a minimum of 1.20x, backed by contracts with highly rated counterparties.
When to Choose Which
The right route follows from your deployment's size, its contract and whether the GPUs are already earning. Leases fit when a lessor owning the GPUs suits your balance sheet.
- Middle-market deployment with a multi-year offtake contract. Near the tracker's $44.2 million median, with an unrated customer, a GPU-secured term loan in an SPV fits best.
- Cluster already deployed and earning. When capital is tied up in GPUs serving customers, refinance through equipment finance or a GPU-secured loan.
- Very large build with highly rated counterparties. A rated facility fits contracts covering most of the term, and vendor financing bridges until permanent debt closes.
Where Financing Through USD.AI Fits
USD.AI is built for the Compute Middle Market, and GPU financing through USD.AI uses the same structure on every deal. An SPV holds the GPUs, offtake contracts and revenue accounts, and lenders hold a first-priority claim on the GPUs, contracts and revenue. Capital is held in escrow, and escrow releases the loan capital once the servers are installed, burned in and independently verified.
Compute IQ scores every deal, assessing the operator, the customer and the contract on a 100-point scale. The score sets financeability, the pricing tier and the loan's size and structure. The system is built on more than $25 billion of GPU financing data points. A dedicated servicer manages each loan for its lenders for the full term.
As of September 2026, USD.AI had reviewed over 700 GPU financing deals. Every publicly announced financing is listed in the USD.AI loan history.
FAQ
What are the main GPU financing options?
The main GPU financing options are a GPU-secured term loan in an SPV, equipment finance (including refinancing deployed GPUs), a finance or operating lease (including sale-leaseback), vendor or OEM financing and guarantees, and investment-grade-rated facilities. They differ on what they underwrite, who owns the GPUs and how long the financing runs.
Can a first GPU deployment get financing?
Yes, a first deployment can be financed when the offtake contract, the customer's credit and the operator's equity support repayment. Track record counts, but lenders weigh it alongside the contract and the customer.
Can you refinance GPUs that are already deployed?
Yes, equipment finance and GPU-secured loans both refinance GPUs already in service, as IREN's $363 million equipment financing in October 2026 shows. The GPUs keep running for customers while they secure the new debt, and the operator recovers capital for its next deployment.
How much does USD.AI finance?
Financing through USD.AI covers up to 80% of the deployment cost, and the operator contributes at least 20% as equity. Financing starts from about $5 million, with larger facilities available, at fixed or floating rates. Terms run 3–5 years with straight-line monthly amortization, a three-month debt-service reserve funded at closing and collateral in Tier III or Tier IV data centers.
