Refinance or sell a GPU cluster
Build it with a bridge or equity. Let it run and get paid. Then refinance into a term loan, sell the servers and lease them back, or sell the cluster.
Have a cluster, or about to build one?
So you have a cluster running, or you are about to deploy one. The cheapest money comes once it is live: before that, a lender carries everything that can go wrong in the build (late servers, a slipped installation, a customer that refuses to accept the cluster) and prices it in, or does not lend.
Once the cluster is running and paid for, the risk is the customer and the hardware, which lenders know how to price. CoreWeave's $8.5B DDTL 4.0 shows it: about $7.5 billion available at first, rising to $8.5 billion as the financed assets stabilize (CoreWeave, Mar 2026).
So the usual path is short money to build, then a refinancing or a sale once it pays. Nscale's Dell equipment financing for its Texas and North Carolina sites runs on initial terms of three to four months, with extensions (S-1).
Bridges and takeouts in public deals
GPU clouds and AI data center builders that borrowed short to build, then replaced the debt with longer money, equity or a sale.
| Company | Built or bridged with | Then | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Digital | $375M interim loan from SMBC, Feb 2025 | Repaid by $2.35B of 9.25% secured notes, Nov 2025 | 10-K |
| Applied Digital | $300M bridge from Goldman Sachs, May 2026 | Refinanced by $1.59B of 7.00% secured notes, Jun 2026 | 10-K |
| Core Scientific | 364-day delayed draw term loans | Repaid by $3.3B of 7.75% secured notes, Apr 2026 | Release |
| TeraWulf | $500M 364-day bridge at SOFR + 2.75%, Mar 2026 | $100M drawn, repaid and closed the next month | 10-Q |
| CoreWeave | $1B bridge term loan, Dec 2024 | Repaid with its IPO proceeds four months later | Prospectus |
| Nscale | Term loans at 13-15%, initially paid in kind, 2023-2025 | Repaid from its Series B equity, October 2025 | S-1 |
| Duos Technologies | $98.1M GPU loan from USD.AI, Jun 2026 | Sold the cluster to Axe Compute, which repaid the debt, Sep 2026 | 8-K |
Company filings and releases. Every public GPU financing: GPU Financing Tracker.
Four ways out of a bridge
| What you get | What you give up | Fits when | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Term loan | Cash against the contract and the servers, repaid over the contract | Covenants, a lien, cash swept to the lender first | The contract runs at least as long as the loan |
| Sale-leaseback | The servers' value in cash; you keep running them | Ownership, and the upside at the end of the lease | Recent GPUs, a solid customer, and you want the cash for the next cluster |
| Sell the cluster | The price, usually as debt repaid plus cash or a deferred payment | The cluster, the contract and the customer | You would rather redeploy than operate, or the price beats holding |
| Preferred or new equity | Cash that ranks behind lenders, with no fixed repayment | A share of the returns, and some control | Lenders want more cash in before they lend |
What lenders and buyers check at each stage
The file you build in the first month is the one a buyer reads in the twelfth.
- Before you build
- A signed customer contract, your cash in, quotes and a delivery schedule, a colocation agreement with power confirmed.
- While it seasons
- Customer acceptance, uptime and payment history, insurance naming the lender, and monthly reporting kept from day one.
- To refinance
- An appraisal, contract term left at least as long as the new loan, and a clean lien.
- To sell
- The same file, plus the customer's consent if the contract needs it, and a plan for who runs the cluster after closing.
Pitfalls
- The residual
- Lenders size the loan on what the servers will be worth. Our conservative band puts a B300 at 52-64% of its original price in 2027 and 37-50% in 2028 (residual value report). Every month you wait, the hardware is worth less.
- Contract shorter than the loan
- Lenders want the contract to repay the loan. CoreWeave's DDTL 5.5 ran five years on contracts averaging about three, and priced SOFR + 5.5%.
- Bridge terms
- Prepayment fees, extension fees and maturity dates you cannot meet if the refinancing slips. Model the refinancing a quarter late.
- Colocation term
- A colocation agreement that ends before the new loan does, or has no access agreement for the lender.
- Seller financing
- A deferred price usually comes with a lien. In the Duos sale, the deferred price falls due early if the buyer takes a loan secured by the cluster.
Buying rather than selling? Our guide for investors: buying an operating GPU cluster (about $454K a server in the Duos sale).
Two minutes to find out if you qualify.
- Your financing application link, straight away
- A 20-minute onboarding call
- A straight answer if it’s not a fit for the program
Prefer email? hello@amcompute.com
Refinancing questions
- What does season and sell mean?
- Finance a cluster with short-term money, let it run and pay for a while, then refinance it or sell it. USD.AI runs its loan exchange this way from the lender's side: it funds GPU loans of under a year and sells them once the hardware is online and performing (Oct 2026).
- How long does a cluster need to season?
- There is no fixed rule. At a minimum: servers delivered and installed, the customer has accepted them, and payments are coming in on time. The more months of clean payments, the more a lender will advance.
- Will refinancing lower my rate?
- It can. CoreWeave borrowed at SOFR + 9.62% in Aug 2023 and SOFR + 2.25% in Mar 2026, after it had a track record and a contract with an investment-grade customer. Applied Digital's takeout notes priced at 7.00% in Jun 2026, against 9.25% in Nov 2025.
- Does my customer have to agree?
- Often. Read the assignment and change of control clauses in your customer contract before you sign it, so a later refinancing or sale does not need a new negotiation.