GPU fleet unit economics.TLDR: Tough to be bearish

GPU fleet unit economics.

TLDR: Tough to be bearish on $Nebius(NBIS.US) or $Coreweave(CRWV.US) right now.

Some maths, but it's important to understand.

Using $Nebius(NBIS.US) 1-3yr contract economics:

- $20-25M ACV per MW at a payback of 1 year 10 months.

- Take $22.5M midpoint ACV/MW at a ~55% cash margin ( $Nebius(NBIS.US) core AI cloud runs ~50%, $Coreweave(CRWV.US) 59%) and you get ~$12.4M/MW of annual cash flow.

(Payback runs against cash flow, not revenue)

- 1.83 years of that implies "all-in" capex of ~$20-23M per MW (GPUs included).

- Which ties to Nebius' $20-25B capex guide for 2026 against ~1GW.

- Over a 4-5 year life that's roughly $50-62M/MW of cumulative cash flow against ~$22M of capex.

- NPV is +$20-25M per MW even discounting at 12-15% and IRR near 50%.

Then years 1-2 of DCF nearly cover the entire capex on their own. Meaning that the GPU could go to $0 residual after year 2 and the deal basically breaks even. That is insane.

So really, the bear case doesn't need slow decay to be wrong. Rather, it needs the contracted years themselves to fail.

And those years are effectively walled off rn.

- Around 70% of $Nebius(NBIS.US) deals carry prepayments covering 50-60% of the capex, on take/pay terms.

- $Coreweave(CRWV.US)'s $104B backlog is take/pay with ~21% of it recognized more than four years out.

As we now know, $Coreweave(CRWV.US) signed an A100 contract running into 2029 (a SKU introduced in 2020) "at or above where it was years ago", and CEO told CNBC a batch of H100s coming off an expired contract was re-booked immediately at 95% of the original rate. $NVIDIA(NVDA.US)'s CFO also said that A100s shipped 6 years ago are still running at full utilization.

And $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) is now willing to underwrite residual value itself, up to 25% per project in the new financing platforms. I don't think they'd be willing to backstop if they expect GPUs to be worthless in around 3 years or so.

For the neoclouds themselves though, depreciation is the biggest cost driver e.g. Nebius D&A was larger than their adj EBITDA last Q.

If economic life actually extends to a new base case scenario of 5-6 years rather than the old 3-4 years...

Earnings power re-rates higher across $Coreweave(CRWV.US), $Nebius(NBIS.US) and even the hyperscalers as ultimate beneficiaries.