There is also a significant amount of accounting fraud happening right now, according to Michael Burry: x.com/michaeljburry/status/198791865010…... The comments to his tweet, if true, tend to say that the real lifespan of an AI chip tends to be around 1 to 3 years in reality, since racks don't cool down that well. Not sure if these commenters are a reliable source though lol. x.com/xdire_me/status/19879204249788377…

Isn’t that what Michael Burry is complaining about? That five years is actually too generous when it comes to depreciation of these assets and that companies are being too relaxed with that estimate. The real depreciation is more like 2-3 years for these GPUs that cost tens of thousands of dollars a piece. x.com/michaeljburry/status/198791865010…

If you're talking about dodgy accounting at hyperscalers, a larger worry might be that they are overstating profits by depreciating their assets (such as datacenters and CPUs/GPUs) too slowly. Estimates are that this could overstate profits by tens of percent. (However, this only allows earnings to be "pulled forward" - sooner or later the servers must be written off and the accounting catches up.) See e.g. deepquarry.substack.com/p/depreciation…... ft.com/content/0dbfe94f-2136-432c-b075…... Michael “The Big Short” Burry: > Understating depreciation by extending useful life of assets artificially boosts earnings -one of the more common frauds of the modern era. x.com/michaeljburry/status/198791865010…