To finance the growth of its global on-demand cloud service, a $500 million special purpose GPU financing vehicle has been secured by Lambda - a GPU cloud firm powered by NVIDIA GPUs and formed by AI engineers. Leading the investment was Macquarie Group, with Industrial Development Funding contributing. This comes after Lambda’s $320 million Series C capital round in February 2024.
According to Lambda COO Mitesh Agrawal, “This first-of-its-kind financing vehicle unlocks a new way to fund the deployment of tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs. Our structure allows our AI startup customers to build the next generation of iconic companies on top of our cloud without the barrier of expensive multi-year contracts. Our objective is to continue building the finest AI computing platform in the world.”
The GPUs would provide security and support for this novel asset-based structure via their cash flow creation. It would enable Lambda, also known as Lambda Labs, to finance on-demand cloud installations for thousands of customers without requiring them to sign a long-term contract, which is a key milestone within the AI computing industry. According to Lambda itself, it is uncommon to get financing for an on-demand service, which would be evidence of Lambda Cloud’s dominant market share and growing client base (more than 100,000).
Expanding GPU Cloud Infrastructure
This funding would enable the training, adjusting, and inferencing of generative AI models on Lambda Cloud by AI developers using NVIDIA GPU deployments. To provide generative AI developers a full stack, Lambda also supports NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
Don Trent, Senior Managing Director of Macquarie Group’s Commodities and Global Markets division, said, “We’re happy to support Lambda as they deliver what AI engineers need as demand for computing picks up pace alongside the widespread integration of LLMs and generative AI. We’re honored to collaborate with Lambda on this ground-breaking project and to support the expansion of GPU cloud infrastructure, which will revolutionize both businesses and industries.”
During the whole of this transaction, Lazard acted as Lambda’s sole financial adviser and placement agent.
