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.
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The key insight: 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. The clip, transcribed here by automatic speech recognition, gives a direction and a time frame but no price, chip model or percentage, and the independent data this publication found cover six months of 2026, so the three-year comparison is unverified.
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.
Ornn’s spot index change over six months of 2026: about a fifth for the A100 (20% in its Table 8) and 70% to 111% for the newer families. This does not test a CEO’s claim about prices three years ago.
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.
The Structural Read
As transcribed, the CEO 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 then says the prices charged for utilizing hoppers are higher than the rates charged three years ago when they were brand new. The claim is about prices charged, not about utilization.
Ornn Data 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, and says the index uses executed on-demand transactions. Sprout says rental rates for prior-generation GPUs rose through 2026 instead of falling. Both sources describe 2026.
Ornn 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. The speaker describes his own company’s Hopper purchases in 2023 and then makes a price comparison, without saying whose prices he means.
Crusoe’s CEO, as transcribed by automatic speech recognition
“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.”
Three Implications
WHAT THE CLIP GIVES A direction and a time frame. The clip does not give a price, a chip model or a percentage.
WHAT THE DATA COVER Ornn’s six-month figures show direction in 2026, not the level against launch pricing, and do not test a CEO’s claim about prices three years ago. This publication did not obtain a three-year price series for Hopper rentals.
DISCLOSURES Ornn says it licenses data commercially and offers GPU rentals through Ornn Compute. The transcription is automatic and was made from a short clip, not the full episode, and this publication verified none of the figures independently.
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.
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Crusoe’s CEO says Hopper prices are now higher than three years ago when the chips were new. That is a spoken claim, transcribed here by automatic speech recognition, and the independent data this publication found cover six months of 2026, so the three-year comparison is unverified.
A note on sourcing. We drew on a spoken claim transcribed from a short video clip using automatic speech recognition, on Ornn Data’s paper, and on Sprout’s post of 30 September 2026. The three-year price comparison is unverified, and the independent data we cite cover six months of 2026. Ornn sells GPU rentals. We did not contact any party independently, and we have not checked any of these claims on our own. Nothing here is a forecast or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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