§ 03The depreciation argument, quantified

The single most consequential QoE input for CoreWeave is GPU economic life. The company books straight-line over a useful life that lies somewhere between 3 and 6 years — but the asset class has been around for less time than that, and the H100/H200/B100 transition is actively reshaping residual values.

Sensitivity · normalized EBITDA at varying GPU lives

GPU useful life	D&A / yr	Adj. EBITDA	Margin
6 years (current book)	2,260	605	29.1%
5 years	2,712	492	23.7%
4 years (common QoE base)	3,390	323	15.6%
3 years (bear case)	4,520	40	1.9%

Reading the table

The choice of GPU life moves CoreWeave from a ~30% margin business to a ~2% margin business without changing a single contract, customer, or operating cost. This is why every buyer-side diligence stress-tests this assumption first.

The historical analogue isn't cloud — it's mainframe leasing in the 1980s, where 5-year vs 3-year lives created the gap between IBM Credit and the secondaries. Today the question is: does H100 hold residual value when B300 ships?