Servers, switches and GPUs. Rented, bought back, or financed.
We are a small finance team that comes from racking and running servers for a living. Most of our clients are hosting providers, system integrators and companies who would rather invest their capital in growing the business than in hardware sitting in a datacenter.
Rent the hardware you need
You tell us which servers you want. We buy them, set them up in your datacenter or your colocation facility, and you pay us a fixed monthly rent for a term of 1 to 5 years. The rent stays the same for the full agreed period, so you know exactly what you will be paying from start to finish.
You have three options when the term ends: continue to rent the nodes, purchase them at the contracted value, or return them to us. If your workloads grow over time, we replace the old nodes with new ones and spread the difference over the remaining term.
Typical: 10 to 200 nodes · 24 to 60 months · new units, or tested used ones at a lower rate
Turn the hardware you own into cash
You can sell the equipment you already have in production to us for cash and lease it back for a fixed monthly rent. That way the capital tied up in the hardware is released for use elsewhere in the company, and the assets come off your balance sheet. Nothing is unplugged.
When a site is shut down or equipment is taken out of service, we purchase it outright, wipe all the disks, issue a certificate of destruction for each unit and remove it from your premises when it suits you. Mixed lots and out-of-warranty equipment are not a problem.
Typical: offer within a week of receiving the serial list · payment on signing
Fund a contract you have already signed
You have just signed a customer up to a 3-year contract and need the hardware to deliver it. We buy that hardware and carry it on our books for the term of the contract. You install it, treat it as your own and bill your end user as normal, while we receive a fixed monthly amount from you for the term of the contract.
For frequent closers of long-term contracts we set up a master agreement and a delivery schedule, so the hardware for the next contract can go out within days of closing the sale.
Typical: contracts from 24 months · hardware stays off your balance sheet
What a deal usually looks like
- Term
- 12 – 60 months
- Deal size
- $50,000 – $5,000,000 per contract
- Currency
- USD or EUR
- Payments
- Monthly, fixed for the whole term
- Hardware
- New, or used and up to five years old
- End of term
- Keep renting, buy out at the figure fixed in the contract, or hand back
- Governing law
- Delaware (US) or the Netherlands (EU)
- Delivery
- United States and the European Union
- First answer
- Five business days after your list lands in our inbox
Pricing depends on three things: the gear itself, how long you keep it and who is signing. The figures above describe what we usually do; they are not limits.
A worked example
Here is an example: 32 GPU nodes, bought new for $1.2 million and rented for 36 months. The figures are illustrative. The actual rate depends on the equipment, the term and the counterparty.
- Equipment cost
- $1,200,000
- Term
- 36 months
- Monthly rent
- $32,900, fixed
- Paid over the term
- $1,184,400
- Buy-out at month 36
- $300,000 (25 % of cost), or return the nodes, or extend
- Cash out on day one
- $0 instead of $1,200,000
The example works out at about 12 % a year with a 25 % residual. Early buy-out is possible at any time, at the price set out for that month in the contract schedule. Either way the hardware is in your rack within 3 to 12 weeks.
What we finance and what we decline
What we finance must have resale value the next day. That's how we can keep our rates low and the end-of-term price constant for you.
We finance
- Rack servers, 1U to 4U: Supermicro, Dell, Lenovo, HPE
- GPU nodes and clusters built on NVIDIA accelerators
- Storage arrays: Pure Storage, NetApp, Dell
- Switches and routers, 10G to 400G: Arista, Juniper, Cisco
- Firewalls, load balancers, optics and DWDM
- Racks, metered PDUs, UPS and batteries
We decline
- Laptops, desktops, phones and other end-user devices
- Consumer-grade or no-name hardware
- Equipment older than five years
- Software licences without hardware
- Anything we cannot inspect before paying
From the list to the rack
Used equipment that we buy from you typically takes a few days to a few weeks. New equipment depends on the manufacturer's lead time and can take 12 weeks or more. Below is how most deals run.
A bill of materials, a supplier quote, or an export from whatever tool you use to track hardware stock. For a contract deal, we need the signed customer agreement for the contract being financed.
Monthly rate, term in months and end-of-term price for each item on your list. Items that don't qualify for financing are noted with the reason why not.
Contract, company extract, beneficial owners, sanctions screening and proof of title for used hardware. Then we pay the vendor, or put the funds in your account.
Depending on what you prefer, we either ship the equipment to your data center and connect it for you, or your engineers collect it at the dock and install it themselves.
Questions we get before the first call
What is the smallest deal you take?
Around $50,000 of equipment. At lower amounts the paperwork would cost more than we make on the deal, and most vendors will offer you their own financing that is likely to suit you better.
Who owns the hardware during the term?
We do. The equipment stays on our books until you pay the buy-out or return it. In the meantime it sits in your rack and you run it as if it were your own.
Who insures it?
You do, under your normal property policy, with us noted as loss payee. We can also arrange the cover ourselves and include it in the monthly rent.
What happens if I miss a payment?
A late payment is a phone call, not a lawyer's letter. We can restructure a term once. Collecting the equipment is a last resort.
Can I buy the hardware before the end of the term?
Yes. All our contracts have an early buy-out schedule laid out in advance, with the amount for each month, so you know the number before you ask.
Do you deliver outside the United States and the EU?
No. We contract and deliver in the United States and the European Union only.
What about VAT and sales tax?
That depends on where the hardware is installed and who the lessee is. We state clearly what applies in the term sheet, before you sign, so the first invoice holds no surprises.
Run by people who rack servers
Digital Street is a small company of people who have run several hosting and colocation services in the Netherlands, Germany and the USA since the late 2000s. Today we still run our own computer rooms in third-party facilities. Our rates for used servers are based on what we can sell them for, because we sell our own used servers.
Digital Street LLC is a Delaware limited liability company. We are a few people with very short decision chains (the person who quoted your deal is the same person who signs off on it). Before we pay anyone out, we verify the counterparty, its owners and the equipment, and money moves only between named company accounts.
Start with the list
An equipment list is all we need to get started. We respond within 2 business days with rates and terms, or with further questions.
start@digitalstreet.ai
Digital Street LLC · 8 The Green, Suite R, Dover, Delaware 19901, United States