alt Hacker NewsAt off peak pricing, which is substantially lower than the standard API rate (50% off). So I assume it looks even better financially overall.
Quick numbers:
At $35/hour in net cash generation per card, a $30,000 GPU would pay for itself entirely in about 850 hours (roughly 35 days)
With an assumed ~ $3 operation cost per card and hour
Replies
Your estimation feels too high. It implies >1000% ROI on a GPU card (= $300k gross annual profit on a $30k card).
As a reference point, Z.ai is operating at 26% gross margin as of 1H26. So assuming ~90% gross margin is likely a bit off.
How is the math so good for data centres but so bad for home gear? A Mac mini capable of running these models ends up at around 10 years of subscription costs.
I still struggle to wrap my head around a $30,000 GPU card. But impressive payback numbers.
DeepSeek CEO has previously said that their finance team considers the optimal payback period for hardware purchase to be 10 months. That is, 10 months worth of revenue should be equal to the purchase price of the hardware. This doesn’t cover operational costs such as electricity. This is their method for API pricing.
Source: https://x.com/FuckAnthropic/article/2080268590033621295 (it’s a leaked meeting transcript so take it with a grain of salt)