GPU Financing and Offtake Agreements: How Contracted Demand Changes the Infrastructure Business Case

Two major GPU infrastructure debt deals closed in 2026 — CoreWeave's $8.5 billion DDTL 4.0 facility and Lambda's $926 million Term Loan B — hinged on contracted customer revenue. Both secured investment-grade credit ratings on facilities backed by GPU infrastructure and contracted customer cash flows. See CoreWeave's disclosure and Lambda's disclosure.

It's easier to model contracted revenue available to service debt than the value of GPU infrastructure at the end of the term.

What Is an Offtake Agreement for Computing, and How Is It Different From a Futures Contract?

An offtake agreement is a contract where a customer agrees to buy a defined amount of compute from the provider, typically at a specified price or pricing structure, over an agreed term. These contracts are valuable because they provide predictable cash flows, supported by the customer's credit quality.

A compute futures contract is a derivative traded on an exchange. CME Group is working on introducing compute futures in 2026, subject to regulatory review. These financial contracts are intended to settle against indices tracking GPU rental prices, including H100 and B200 compute.

Both offtake agreements and compute futures can provide price certainty. However, offtake agreements can support project financing through contracted cash flows and, depending on their terms, assignment or lender step-in rights. Futures contracts are financial instruments tied to an index rather than commitments to purchase the financed capacity.

Why Are Offtake Agreements Important for GPU Infrastructure Project Financing?

Lenders focus on contracted revenue available to service debt, the offtaker's credit quality, and other factors such as operational performance and GPU utilization, as discussed by Gridlines and Matchpoint Partners.

A multi-year customer commitment is a powerful tool for infrastructure financing. While GPUs can also serve as collateral, their resale value is difficult to forecast in an immature secondary market.

An offtake agreement does not determine ownership of the GPU infrastructure. The infrastructure can be owned, leased or funded through a partner, as discussed in our article on AI infrastructure financing through debt, equity and leasing.

Zettabyte's GPU financing service helps prepare and structure transactions for discussion with lending partners. Financing availability, pricing, approval and final terms remain subject to the relevant parties.

What Are the Terms of the Recent GPU Infrastructure Financing Deals Closed in 2026?

CoreWeave described its facility as the first investment-grade-rated financing secured by both high-performance computing infrastructure and an associated customer contract. Lambda's loan was issued at 99.5% of principal to finance a GPU infrastructure deployment for a committed investment-grade offtaker.

Lambda's fully amortizing repayment schedule is aligned with contracted cash flows and the useful life of the GPU infrastructure, demonstrating how customer commitments can support the debt repayment structure.

What Went Wrong With NVIDIA's AI Compute Partnership?

NVIDIA reportedly paused elements of its AI Compute Partnership in August 2026 over internal concerns about potential antitrust issues related to its influence over participating cloud providers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

An example of this type of arrangement is SharonAI's June 2026 agreement with NVIDIA: a six-year collaboration covering up to 72MW and 40,000 Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs. The agreement includes revenue sharing and credit support. SharonAI also raised approximately $900 million through an equity-related private placement and $700 million in convertible notes to support its expansion, according to its financing disclosure.

This arrangement differs from a conventional independent offtaker agreement because the hardware supplier also participates in downstream revenue and provides credit support. This can connect technology, supplier and commercial risks.

Changes in that relationship could therefore affect multiple aspects of the financing.

What Should a Bankable Offtake Agreement Include?

• Counterparty credit quality: Which legal entity is responsible for the contractual payment obligations, and what is its credit quality? Who guarantees or otherwise provides credit support? Do the obligations survive a change of control?

• Revenue structure: Does the agreement provide for take-or-pay or other minimum payment commitments, or is revenue dependent on usage? How are these obligations reflected in debt-service assumptions?

• Tenor versus refresh cycle: Does the agreement cover the expected hardware refresh cycle? If it ends earlier, how are residual-value assumptions incorporated into the TCO model? See our analysis of GPU depreciation and residual value.

• Step-in rights: What control does the lender have following a default? Can customer agreements be assigned, and what restrictions apply to remarketing capacity or other collateral?

Offtake Agreements Do Not Cover Residual Value

When debt is structured against customer contracts and amortized accordingly, the residual value of the GPU fleet remains a separate question.

CCIR tracks the secondary GPU market, including executed sales and posted asking prices. Its September 2026 figures cited approximately $29.4 million in recorded sales across 13,555 units and 3,356 sold listings from July 2023 through September 2026. That recorded transaction value represents approximately 0.35% of CoreWeave's $8.5 billion facility.

These figures illustrate the limited volume of publicly tracked secondary-market transactions relative to large GPU financing facilities. They do not represent the entire global used-GPU market.

In one disclosed transaction, WhiteFiber sold 126 H200 servers for approximately $26.1 million in Q1 2026, around 90% of their original cost, according to CCIR. However, one fleet transaction is insufficient to establish a reliable market-wide residual-value benchmark.

Other mature collateral markets have enough transaction volume to provide more reliable pricing benchmarks. It remains uncertain whether the GPU secondary market will develop sufficient depth for residual values to be underwritten with comparable confidence.

CoreWeave's DDTL 5.5 credit agreement, dated August 7, 2026, includes a schedule titled "GPU Depreciation Amount Spreadsheet." However, the publicly searchable sections reviewed do not establish a standardized market-based residual-value benchmark through an appraisal process. This does not necessarily mean that the financing lacks collateral valuation requirements.