Comment by bagacrap
7 hours ago
So someone correct me but I think this is sort of an accounting trick. When Microsoft buys an Nvidia GPU for $100, it will claim that it lasts 5 years, so writes down $20 in the expense column for this year. Meanwhile Nvidia takes all the profit at time of sale, $100. So for each GPU bought, SP500 logs $80 of profit, even though no money entered or left the SP500.
(Yes of course the GPU cost something to make, but the margins on these things are very high. The point is that revenue is immediate while capital expenses are amortized. And capital expenditure has gone way up lately.)
> When Microsoft buys an Nvidia GPU for $100, it will claim that it lasts 5 years, so writes down $20 in the expense column for this year. Meanwhile Nvidia takes all the profit at time of sale, $100
Nvidia would log $64 of profit against a $100 sale [1]. (The R&D cost to develop the chip have already been booked.)
> for each GPU bought, SP500 logs $80 of profit, even though no money entered or left the SP500
In your example the S&P would log ~$40 of earnings. (About because taxes.)
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/profit...
Ok great, thanks for clarification. But still, on year 3 of the AI buildout, assuming the pace doesn't accelerate (it's already pretty fast!) then each GPU bought logs $0 profit since it's offset by amortization of the last two years. Compared to $40 of today, profit dropped by $40, meaning earnings contraction is around the corner...? Unless of course Microsoft manages to actually earn $20 or more from each GPU each year.
I suppose the uncertainty here would be the reason for financial market volatility.
> Compared to $40 of today, profit dropped by $40, meaning earnings contraction is around the corner...? Unless of course Microsoft manages to actually earn $20 or more from each GPU each year
Correct. If Microsoft fails to earn more profit from a capital asset, over said asset's useful life, than was paid for it, Microsoft's earnings would be reduced. Put simply, it would have made a bad investment. Presumably, that would affect whether Nvidia gets another order.
If you've ever wondered why subscription mania took hold over the last decade, you've backed into the answer.
(Note that Microsoft depreciates "servers and network equipment" on a straight-line basis over "two to six years" [1].)
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/0001193125263... page 61
1 reply →
>Ok great, thanks for clarification. But still, on year 3 of the AI buildout, assuming the pace doesn't accelerate (it's already pretty fast!) then each GPU bought logs $0 profit since it's offset by amortization of the last two years.
Probably worth noting that Azure has had GPU resources for a while, I think it was already a profitable line for them, and since people have been chasing GPU compute on cloud platforms it can be difficult in some regions getting a reservation. Microsoft is probably looking at AI as Another profitable use case for our assets, let's expand it rather than a greenfields GPU buildout from zero. And where capacity doesn't get used by AI their customers can use it for other stuff across most not all SKUs
What's wrong with this though? Value was created (a physical GPU), so assets go up.
Different people/orgs get a different slice of that value.
There is a cost to produce something based on raw materials and then the possible price you can charge from the customer based on demand and supply.
The term Value is pretty vague here. Its more of a perceived value so its hard to put a number against it, there is no direct way to translate it to something more concrete.
May be bit orthogonal, one way I can think of it is to map to physical needs like clothing, housing, food and medicine?
It is really only the perceived value which matters to a business - that's the value at which you can sell or replace your asset on the market. Offers above that price, you sell (and replace if needed). Offers below that price, you don't.
If it costs more to produce (and sell) the asset than you can sell it for, you're losing money and assets go down. If it costs the same, then in this example the net change in S&P assets would be zero.
> there is no direct way to translate it to something more concrete.
There's an incredibly easy way to do that, sell it.
If Nvidia takes $20 of parts and sells it for $100, they created $80 of value. If we had VAT, that's what would be taxed (minus things like r and d but, for simplicity...).
The value of a physical GPU is yet to be determined, and is hard to reverse engineer from these figures.
Is it conceivable that Microsoft has some way to use said GPU to generate additional revenue and operating profits?
See the earlier discussion about DeepSeek's revenue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163494
When BMW sell you a car, and you buy it on finance (hire-purchase etc.) where they are lending you the money to buy it, they recognise the entire sale value of the car there and then. They even pay tax on the cash they don’t yet have in their pocket.
Meanwhile, you amortise it over years.
For some reason, nobody argues that this isn’t a real sale of a real car.
If it’s all just circular financing, then tax day will be the reveal, as there will simply be no money to pay the corporation tax on the profits.
Almost, the depreciation is 2 years, but for some reason they wrote it up like 5 for now. But anyone buy nvdia chips is already maxxed out on debt for the next 5 years and the new chips are here shortly. What happens to those 100's of billions in chips?? They get written off. We're already seeing them in cars. There is no shortage except on the scrutiny of the whole securities thing.