Why you cannot just resell your GPU contract

Most cloud terms grant you a licence that is non-sublicensable and non-transferable. Lambda's cloud terms say so in section 2(a). CoreWeave's platform terms say the same. Some large deals are gates rather than walls: CoreWeave's agreement with OpenAI bars resale unless mutually agreed, and its agreement with NVIDIA expressly allows serving end users at a price the customer sets.

The physics

Even with permission, you cannot hand over a slice of a running cluster. The boundary between tenants is set when the machines are provisioned. To give a buyer eight nodes, the operator has to partition the fabric, re-image the nodes and wipe them. So the thing that can move is a whole window on intact nodes, not a percentage of a busy fleet.

The route

Sublicense, not transfer. The data centre consents once, in a rider to its own contract. The seller stays the customer of record and stays liable. The buyer is added underneath, from a list the operator has screened. The operator gets a share of the price, a floor, a right of first refusal and a delay before anything is published.

The alternative on offer today is a buy-back in credits. The best-documented one, in its own worked example, returned under three per cent of what the seller had paid. Cash for a window is a different offer.