Amazon's GB300 racks sit idle in warehouses over power shortfall

Business Insider reported on October 19, 2026 that some of the Nvidia GB300 server racks Amazon has purchased are sitting in warehouses because the data centers meant to host them lack enough power to turn them on. Citing internal Amazon emails, the report said the company expected to take delivery of about $5 billion worth of GB300 racks in August 2026 and roughly $3 billion per month after that, a pace expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The target data centers reportedly have room for more racks but not enough available power to boot them, so the equipment is held in an intermediate warehouse. Because Amazon must pay for the hardware before it is deployed and operating in order to take ownership early, cash goes out sooner.

At an internal staff meeting in September 2026, AWS chief financial officer John Felton told Prasad Kalyanaraman, the executive overseeing AI infrastructure, that he had turned the company's free cash flow negative. Kalyanaraman did not dispute the remark and said free cash flow is expected to stay negative for roughly the next few years. The reporting also noted that Amazon's 2026 capital expenditure is projected at $220 billion, and that when the company reported second-quarter results in July, its trailing free cash flow had turned negative at -$7.6 billion, the first such shift in years.

The account currently stops at what the internal documents and meeting recording show: the racks remain in storage, the power shortfall has not been resolved, and Amazon has not publicly commented on the matter.