By Kif Leswing
Publication Date: 2025-11-14 12:00:00
Nvidia President and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about NVIDIA Omniverse as he delivers the keynote address during the Nvidia GTC (GPU Technology Conference) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Oct. 28, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
As a handful of the world’s most valuable companies set out to spend $1 trillion over the next five years on data centers for artificial intelligence, one line item is on the minds of executives and investors: depreciation.
In accounting, depreciation is the act of allocating the cost of a hard asset over the course of its expected useful life. It’s an increasingly important concept in the tech industry, as companies predict how long the hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units they’re purchasing will remain useful or retain their value.
Infrastructure giants like Google, Oracle and Microsoft have said their servers could be useful for up to six years. But they could also depreciate much sooner. Microsoft said in its latest annual filing that its computer equipment lasts two to six years.
That’s a lot to consider for the investors and lenders financing the giant AI buildouts, because the longer equipment remains valuable, the more years a company can stretch out depreciation and the less it hurts profits.
AI GPUs represent a particular challenge because they’re still relatively new to the market. Nvidia’s first AI-focused processors for the data center came out around…
