"Dark GPUs" at Amazon show the limits of the AI buildout: chips are easy to buy, power is not

What happened

Some US-based AWS facilities don't have enough power to install and turn the servers on, which means the costly hardware is being stored in "intermediary" warehouses until the final data center (a building full of computers that runs online services) site is completed. Amazon is allegedly taking in billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia racks every month, even though some sites aren't ready for them and there is no electricity to feed the AI accelerators just yet. NVIDIA is a semiconductor company based in Santa Clara.

AI Industry amazon aws data center "Dark GPUs" at Amazon show the limits of the AI buildout: chips are easy to buy, power is not AWS is reportedly buying billions in Nvidia GB300 racks every month and storing them in warehouses By Alfonso Maruccia October 24, 2026, 8:12 Add TechSpot Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust .

A new report says the company is buying more GPUs than it has the power to run. According to internal emails seen by Business Insider, Amazon is willing to tie up billions in cash upfront as long as it can secure new hardware capacity early.

The messages describe Amazon's Early Rack Receipt process, through which AWS expected to take around $5 billion worth of Nvidia GB300 server racks in August alone, with roughly $3 billion more expected every month for the foreseeable future. Amazon is getting servers "built for the age of AI reasoning" before the final deployment phase.

In the emails, one Amazon team lamented that there was no clear forecast for actually installing all the GPUs the company was acquiring each month. Amazon's lack of energy capacity is part of a growing phenomenon known as "dark GPUs." Data center and cloud giants are piling up all the hardware they can, but much of it is essentially gathering dust on shelves while the rest of the IT industry is left with the scraps .