Study finds older NVIDIA GPUs like A100 retain long-term earning power via open-weight AI models

A new Ornn Data paper argues that NVIDIA's older Ampere-generation GPUs, particularly the A100, remain economically useful far longer than assumed because open-weight models can be run cheaply on them. The analysis found that self-hosted open-weight models like gpt-oss-120b produce output more cheaply on A100 chips than on newer H100 hardware, and that A100 rental prices have stayed unusually stable over a five-year contract period compared to Hopper and Blackwell chips.