But if your competitor is running newer chips that consume less power per operation, aren't you forced to upgrade as well and dispose of the old hardware?
It depends on how much profit you are making. As long as you can still be profitable on the old hardware you don't have to upgrade.
Sure, assuming the power cost reduction or capability increase justifies the expenditure. It's not clear that that will be the case. That's one of the shaky assumptions I'm referring to. It may be that the 2030 nvidia accelerators will save you $2000 in electricity per month per rack, and you can upgrade the whole rack for the low, low price of $800,000! That may not be worth it at all. If it saves you $200k/per rack or unlocks some additional capability that a 2025 accelerator is incapable of and customers are willing to pay for, then that's a different story. There are a ton of assumptions in these scenarios, and his logic doesn't seem to justify the confidence level.