Nvidia has announced a new business model under which it’ll be able to double-dip for revenue on the same silicon: once when its partner AI clouds use its hardware, and again as an ongoing percentage of the revenue that hardware generates. In a blog post co-authored by CFO Colette Kress, the company pitched the “revenue-sharing and credit-support model” as a way to open compute access to startups that can’t finance it themselves. In practice, cash-poor AI companies trade a slice of whatever they eventually earn for tokens today, while a supplier already running roughly 75% gross margins reaches into its customers’ income statements for a second helping of cash. Australia's Sharon AI and Singapore-based Firmus Technologies are the first named partners.
Under the structure, participating AI clouds procure Nvidia infrastructure and sell Nvidia-powered cloud services to end customers. Nvidia collects its usual product revenue on the hardware plus a percentage of the cloud income earned on that capacity, which the blog post describes as a recurring, usage-linked earnings stream. Per Bloomberg, developers receive token credits in exchange for a slice of their future sales, but neither Nvidia nor its partners has disclosed the revenue-split percentages.
