Paying for GPUs Before Financing Closes: Who Pays What, and When
Introduction
If you are paying for GPUs before financing closes, your own money at risk is your equity, paid to the OEM with the order. The loan capital is committed when you sign the loan and held in escrow until the servers are installed, burned in and independently verified.
The order comes first because supply is tight. NVIDIA said for the quarter ended July 2026 that it is "currently experiencing certain supply constraints." Payment from its own customers is "generally due shortly after delivery," yet OEMs and distributors selling servers to operators often want deposits and binding orders.
This guide is for founders and finance leads at GPU cloud operators ordering a deployment. It covers the payment sequence from order to escrow release, the ways operators fund the equity, and where deals go wrong before the loan funds.
Why GPU Servers Get Paid for Before the Loan Funds
Suppliers set the payment schedule, and in a constrained market they ask for commitment early. Supermicro said for its fiscal year ended June 2026 that its manufacturing lead times have "extended beyond twelve months for some products." With builds that long, an operator that waits for its loan to fund before ordering waits longer for its servers.
Pinsent Masons reported in July 2026 that GPU distributors "often require binding purchase orders, deposits, advance payments, minimum volume commitments." It also describes a reservation model, in which a non-refundable fee secures future capacity and the buyer pays the final price on shipment. No OEM publishes a standard deposit percentage, so the amount due with your order is whatever your purchase agreement says.
Smaller buyers also find financing harder to line up. NVIDIA says access to capital "can be particularly constrained for less-capitalized companies" seeking financing for large infrastructure projects. Large operators commit early too. IREN's annual report for the year ended June 2026 says it may commit to hardware "in advance of arranging the asset-backed financing."
That leaves a gap between the order and the loan funding. The steps below close it in a fixed order, with your equity going in first.
How Payment Works from Order to Escrow Release
Financing through USD.AI runs in a fixed order, and your cash goes in first. Every deal uses the same structure and standardized documents, so the sequence below is the same on every loan.
Escrow sits at the center of that sequence. Under Cornell Law School's definition, escrow is an arrangement in which money, property or other assets are deposited with a neutral third party. Here, that third party holds the loan capital until agreed release conditions are met.
1. Line up the offtake contract, purchase order and colocation
Every loan starts with the revenue that will repay it. In GPU financing through USD.AI, you secure an offtake contract, the agreement under which a customer buys your compute, or documented on-demand revenue. You also need a purchase order from the OEM or an authorized supplier.
For financing through USD.AI, the servers go into a Tier III or Tier IV data center under a colocation agreement for space, power and cooling. The purchase order sets the hardware, the price and the loan size, because the loan is sized against the deployment cost. USD.AI does not resell GPUs, so you place the order directly with the OEM or authorized supplier.
The offtake contract carries the most weight of the three documents, since its payments repay the loan. Our guide to how offtake agreements work covers the terms in more detail. With all three in hand, you can size the equity you will owe at order.
2. Pay your equity to the OEM with the order
In financing through USD.AI, you pay your equity, at least 20% of the deployment cost, to the OEM with the order. This is the money of your own at risk before the loan funds. It also answers the supplier's demand for commitment, because the order is backed by cash.
Equity is confirmed before any loan capital is released. Your own money is in the deal first, and the lenders' capital follows once the servers are verified.
Illustrative example: on an assumed $10 million deployment, financing through USD.AI covers up to $8 million. You pay at least $2 million to the OEM with the order. Where your offtake contract includes a prepayment from the customer, part of that $2 million comes from it, as covered in the funding options below. Read the purchase agreement's refund and cancellation terms before this payment leaves your account.
3. Sign the loan: capital is committed and moved into escrow
In financing through USD.AI, the loan capital, up to 80% of the deployment cost, is committed at signing and held by an independent escrow agent. It never passes through your hands and waits in escrow while the OEM builds and ships the servers.
In financing through USD.AI, you also fund a three-month debt-service reserve at closing, a cash reserve sized to cover three months of loan payments. Budget for it alongside the equity, since it is also your money and goes in before escrow releases.
The deployment sits in a special-purpose vehicle (SPV), a company set up only to hold one financing's assets. The SPV holds the GPUs, the offtake contract and the revenue accounts, and lenders hold a first-priority claim on the GPUs, contracts and revenue. Our overview of the GPU financing process steps shows where signing falls in the wider process.
4. Servers are installed, burned in and verified
The OEM builds and ships the servers, and they are installed at the data center. Each server is then burned in, which means run under sustained load to catch early hardware failures. Finally, the deployment is independently verified online.
The colocation provider also signs a lien waiver, a document in which it gives up any claim on the servers ahead of the lenders. A data center owed rent could otherwise assert rights over hardware sitting in its halls. The waiver removes that risk before any loan capital moves.
These checks tie the release of capital to servers that are running. USD.AI's underwriting standards set out each release condition, including the colocation lien waiver.
5. Escrow releases the loan capital and repayment begins
Escrow releases the loan capital once release conditions are met. The servers must be installed, burned in and independently verified, with the colocation lien waiver in place. Your equity and the released loan capital together cover the full deployment cost.
Large public operators use the same logic. IREN's annual report for the year ended June 2026 describes financing drawn in tranches aligned to delivery milestones. Note proceeds go into a restricted escrow account at each tranche closing, and its August 2026 financing funds upon acceptance of the relevant equipment.
Property and casualty insurance covers the hardware once escrow is released. The offtaker pays into the SPV's revenue account. In financing through USD.AI, the loan runs for 3–5 years with straight-line monthly amortization, meaning the same amount of principal is repaid each month. The table sets out every payment in financing through USD.AI, in order.
| Payment | Who pays | Paid to | When in the sequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equity (at least 20% of deployment cost) | Operator | OEM or authorized supplier | With the order |
| Debt-service reserve (three months of loan payments) | Operator | Reserve held for loan payments | At closing |
| Loan capital (up to 80% of deployment cost) | Lenders | An independent escrow agent | Committed at signing |
| Escrow release | An independent escrow agent | Released once release conditions are met | After servers are installed, burned in and independently verified |
| Offtake payments | Offtaker | SPV's revenue account | Over the loan term |
Ways to Fund Your Equity Before the Loan Funds
Large operators cover much of the early cash need with customer prepayments and staged debt. A smaller operator relies more on its own balance sheet and any offtake prepayment it can negotiate. The public filings show how far apart those two positions are.
IREN's Microsoft contract, disclosed in November 2025, requires "20% of the contract value for each tranche to be paid prior to the applicable delivery date." Nebius reported that about 70% of deals it closed in Q2 2026 included customer prepayments "covering 50-60% of the associated capex." As of June 2026, CoreWeave draws its delayed-draw term loans, facilities committed up front and drawn in portions, in stages as it builds. CoreWeave also reported weighted-average prepayments of 15% to 25% of total contract value across its active contracts at year-end 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Clifford Chance's 2026 insights point to "multi-draw programmes that fund rolling acquisition of batches of GPUs" as funding that matches the procurement curve. The IREN and CoreWeave structures rest on large contracts, CoreWeave's generally with investment-grade counterparties. A middle-market operator should plan around the options below.
| Option | How it covers the equity | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Own balance sheet | Cash on hand pays the equity with the order | How much you can commit if delivery slips or the order is cancelled |
| Offtake prepayment | In financing through USD.AI, it funds part of the equity where the offtake contract allows it, reviewed deal by deal | Whether the contract permits the prepayment to count toward equity |
| Staged or delayed-draw debt | A facility committed up front and drawn in portions as equipment is bought | Public examples come from operators with large, contracted deployments |
| Bridge loan or purchase-order financing | A bridge loan is short-term debt that covers a cost until longer-term financing arrives; purchase-order financing pays a supplier against a confirmed order | Who provides it and how it is repaid alongside the main loan |
Whichever mix you choose, the equity has to be in place when the order is placed. Our guide to financing a GPU cluster shows how the equity, debt and offtake contract fit together across a deployment.
Common Problems Before the Loan Funds
Problems before the loan funds tend to start in four documents: the purchase agreement, the offtake contract, the colocation agreement and the purchase order. Each has a fix you can make before the deposit leaves your account.
- Non-refundable deposits and cancellation penalties. Read refund and cancellation terms before paying. Pinsent Masons advises allocating risk where upstream supply is delayed, reduced or reprioritised.
- Offtake prepayment terms. Confirm the offtake contract allows the prepayment to count toward your equity before you plan your cash around it.
- Colocation lien waiver. Raise the waiver with your data center early, because escrow release waits until it is signed.
- Specification changes. A change to the purchase order changes the deployment cost the loan is sized against, so agree the final configuration before signing.
Each fix costs little while you still hold the deposit. Once the money has gone to the supplier, a refund clause becomes a negotiation in which you have less leverage. The same applies to a lien waiver or a prepayment clause that nobody raised before the order was placed.
How Financing Through USD.AI Fits
Financing through USD.AI follows one sequence on every deal. Your equity goes to the OEM with the order, and the loan capital is committed at signing and held in escrow until verification. USD.AI's GPU financing covers up to 80% of the deployment cost. Before release, your own cash need is the equity and the three-month debt-service reserve.
Every deal is scored by Compute IQ, which rates the operator, the customer and the contract on one 100-point scale. The score sets the loan's size and structure, along with financeability and the pricing tier. Because every deal is scored on the same evidence and closes on the same structure, you know the payment sequence before you place the order.
To start, bring your offtake contract, purchase order and deployment plan to a first conversation. We will walk through the sequence against your deployment and show where your equity and reserve fit.
FAQ
Do I need my own money before a GPU loan funds?
Yes: in financing through USD.AI, you pay at least 20% of deployment cost as equity with the order, plus a three-month debt-service reserve at closing. An offtake prepayment funds part of the equity where the offtake contract allows it.
Can the lender pay the OEM deposit?
The deposit comes from your equity, because the loan capital is committed at signing and held in escrow. Escrow releases it once release conditions are met: servers installed, burned in and independently verified.
What happens if the servers are delayed?
The loan capital stays in escrow until release conditions are met. Delays are governed by the delivery and cancellation terms in your OEM purchase agreement, so negotiate those terms before you pay the deposit.
When do loan payments start?
Loan payments follow the loan's straight-line amortization, which repays the same amount of principal each month. They are paid from offtake revenue that the customer pays into the SPV's revenue account.
Editor Notes
Internal links to add once live
- gpu financing equity requirement
- oem server manufacturers
- spv financing
Open items held back pending origination
- Whether OEMs accept the escrowed loan commitment as proof of funds
- How partial deliveries are handled
- Who receives the escrow release
Facts and figures held back by brand rules (would have strengthened the piece)
- Escrow longstop period (return of undeployed escrow capital): Timing rule and reviewer drop
- Escrow agent's name: Service providers rule
- USD.AI sales-cycle data: Timing rule and reviewer drop
- Server prices from OEM listings: reviewer drop
- Portfolio APR: Loan terms rule and Approved exceptions rule
- Typical OEM deposit percentage: no source publishes one, and the reviewer barred estimating it
- Supplier payment terms in days: reviewer drop and "net terms" ban
- Minimum DSCR, fees, rates and prepayment terms: Loan terms rule
- USD.AI's published deals and borrower examples: Borrower names rule and outline scope
- CoreWeave's delayed-draw total outstanding and Nebius's revenue forecast: reviewer drop
