Crusoe’s CEO Says Hopper Rates Beat Launch Pricing

Crusoe’s CEO says on the 20VC podcast that the prices charged for using Hopper GPUs are now higher than when the chips were new three years ago. That is a spoken claim about Hopper prices, transcribed here from a short clip by automatic speech recognition. The only independent data this publication found covers six months of 2026, so the three-year comparison is unverified.

What He Said

In a 20VC with Harry Stebbings interview titled “Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong,” Crusoe’s CEO describes his company’s Hopper purchases in 2023. This publication transcribed a clip of the passage with automatic speech recognition, so the wording below may contain errors.

As transcribed, he says that when the company started making “really substantial purchases with hoppers,” in 2023, “the feedback we got was like, well, we don’t even know if this is gonna be valuable after year three.”

He continues: “Here we are three years later and the prices being charged for utilizing hoppers is higher than the rates that were being charged three years ago when they were brand new.” The claim is about prices charged, not about utilization.

What Independent Data Show

Ornn Data’s paper “The Economics of Open-Weight Inference” reports that its settled daily spot index rose 70 to 111 percent for the newer GPU families and about a fifth for the A100 between 1 March and 1 September 2026. Its table gives the A100 spot change as 20%.

Ornn says its spot index uses executed on-demand transactions. It also discloses that it licenses data commercially and offers GPU rentals through Ornn Compute, which it says creates “a commercial interest in both the interpretation and adoption of its data.”

Sprout, which says it draws on its own ledger of settled sales, says in its post of 30 September 2026 that rental rates for prior-generation GPUs rose through 2026 instead of falling.

What the Data Do Not Cover

Both sources describe 2026. The CEO’s claim compares today with 2023, when the chips were new. This publication did not obtain a three-year price series for Hopper rentals, so the comparison he draws is unchecked here.

The six-month Ornn figures show direction in 2026, not the level against launch pricing. They also do not say what terms any seller charges, which the clip does not state.

Who Is Speaking

The speaker describes his own company’s Hopper purchases in 2023 and then makes a price comparison, without saying whose prices he means.

The clip does not give a price, a chip model or a percentage. It gives a direction and a time frame.

What Is Not Established

The three-year price comparison, the identity of the prices he refers to and whether they are Crusoe’s or the market’s are not established. The transcription is automatic and was made from a short clip, not the full episode.

Nothing here says what any GPU is worth or how any financing will perform. All figures are Ornn’s or Sprout’s own and none was independently verified. Nothing in this piece is investment advice.