alt Hacker NewsNapkin math on 5 year depreciation is 5.5 billion per year for 28 billion. However the 28 billion is cash upfront, spacex is probably paying 10-20% interest on the 28 billion for another 2-6 billion per year.
So net you are looking at finance expenses of 7-11 billion per year. The electricity costs will be significant on top of that, but harder to get a solid read on.
Net of everything, spacex may be getting a 14-28 percent yield before paying for electricity. After electricity/insurance/data/taxes/other expenses - I’d guess it’s anywhere between 0% and 7% yield.
Odds are good that Anthropic abandons the deal before the depreciation schedule completes. Who is going to rent the GPUs then?
Replies
That assumes they are renting out the whole capacity. Have you seen anything suggesting that's the case?
5.5 year depreciation is only on the chips. Power, networking, cabling, the actual construction of the building is probably closer to 60% of that number. Also, they are only renting out colosus 1 ($10B), not colosus II ($18B).
So, it's 10B, with $4b of that being attributed to a 5 year depreciation. The rest of the facility probably has a depreciation of around 20 years, and you can easily swap out GPU's, TPU's, Trititum, Tesla's own GPU's, as they start failing, so the normal depreciation curve only "kinda applies here".
There is no interest, as he was venture funded not debt funded.
Electricity is coming from Nat Gas Turbines, so again even though you have a some depreciation on the equipment there, you are getting it for far below meter prices.
So, from my math, he gets ROI on the chips in 3 months, and ROI on the entire facility in 9 months? That's literally the best investment of all time.