>...its just that there's so much demand, that people are paying these markups.
The catch is that the vast majority of that demand is from data center projects, not actual AI users. And data center projects are funded by private credit that is speculating about future demand (most of these centers will take years to build out). So a corporate user who would put the hardware into service now has to compete with a data center project that is hoarding GPUs for the future. If those GPUs end up being used AND the operative margins on AI SaaS are high enough, then the speculators may win. If either of those conditions are not met (and both look pretty shaky), then the data center bubble will burst and the GPUs will flood the market at pennies to the dollar.
The catch is that the vast majority of that demand is from data center projects, not actual AI users. And data center projects are funded by private credit that is speculating about future demand (most of these centers will take years to build out). So a corporate user who would put the hardware into service now has to compete with a data center project that is hoarding GPUs for the future. If those GPUs end up being used AND the operative margins on AI SaaS are high enough, then the speculators may win. If either of those conditions are not met (and both look pretty shaky), then the data center bubble will burst and the GPUs will flood the market at pennies to the dollar.