Today · article October 21

Tunguz ranks GPU revenue per hour; all figures are estimates

Tomasz Tunguz, a partner at the venture firm Theory Ventures, ranks revenue per GPU per hour on a four-rung ladder of US$38, US$8.77, US$5.27 and US$2.44; the four figures use four different bases, and Tunguz notes that all are estimates. Tunguz has long written financial analysis of SaaS and AI. Our reading: whether inference pays back at today's prices depends on which rung one stands on, and any single figure needs its basis checked before it is cited. The four rungs, in order (Tomasz Tunguz, 2026-10-21): US$38 is DeepSeek's own calculation of a single cluster's ceiling, which Tunguz labels a "theoretical maximum." US$8.77 is the October 20 B200 spot rental price on the ORNN index, a GPU-cloud transaction-price index Tunguz cites. US$5.27 is the contract price in SpaceX's listing documents, US$1.25 billion for 325,000 GPUs; Tunguz treats that sum as a month of 730.5 hours for those 325,000 GPUs and converts it to a per-card hourly rate. US$2.44 is Tunguz's calculation from SpaceX's annualized third-quarter AI-segment revenue divided by 1.7 GW of installed capacity, which is installed capacity, not capacity in use. Converting GW into a GPU count requires an assumed power draw per card, and Tunguz doesn't give that number. Each rung is 40% to 77% below the one above. Because the bases differ, this is not one price falling step by step. Tunguz writes, "Every figure here is an estimate." The October 21 issue described the US$38 as "off-peak realized revenue," while Tunguz's table labels it a theoretical ceiling; which basis is right can't be settled because DeepSeek's original page hasn't been reviewed. SpaceX's original filing hasn't been reviewed either. Tunguz is a venture investor, and the article doesn't disclose holdings. How we checked →

Concept illustration on a mustard-yellow background: a tall black ladder has four white shelves, each holding a red chip lettered GPU, with three dark server racks on the top shelf, a white tag hanging from the chip and a stack of gold coins on the second, a sheet of paper with grey lines, a pen and a coin stack on the third, and an electricity pylon wired to four server racks plus a small coin stack on the bottom, while a cloud-shaped thought bubble holding a tall coin stack floats above the top shelf. Signs fixed to the ladder's right rail read, from top to bottom, DEEPSEEK (beside a blue whale icon), ORNN and SPACEX; a large black quotation mark sits at the right edge, and at lower left a person in a dark suit, seen from behind, points toward the ladder.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 22, 2026, alongside 15 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "Tunguz ranks GPU revenue per hour; all figures are estimates." https://secondsource.io/en/expert/2026-10-22-1/. Accessed access date.