SemiAnalysis: The Great GPU Shortage: Rental Capacity (H100 1-year rental price index launch)#
| URL | https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-great-gpu-shortage-rental-capacity |
| Published | 2026-04-02 |
| Read | 2026-09-26 (free section) |
| Paywall | Not fully determined; the key claims below were readable |
Summary (our words)#
- Prices: H100 1-year rental contracts rose about 40%, from $1.70/hr in October 2025 to $2.35/hr in March 2026, with 15–20% monthly steps in early 2026.
- Availability: on-demand capacity is effectively sold out; capacity coming online through August–September 2026 was already booked; small clusters were hard to find.
- Drivers: agentic and coding workloads (Anthropic's run-rate is said to have more than tripled in a quarter) and parabolic memory pricing (DDR5 contracts about 5× and LPDDR5 about 4× year on year).
- Consequence: higher rental prices extend the useful economic life of GPUs.
- Outlook: rental prices are more likely to keep rising than to fall, depending on GB300 deployment, silicon supply and lab revenue growth.
Claims#
| ID | Claim | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| SA-rental-1 | H100 1-year rental: $1.70 (Oct 2025) → $2.35 (Mar 2026), about +40% | "shot up almost 40% from a low of $1.70/hr/GPU in October 2025 to $2.35/hr/GPU by March 2026" |
| SA-rental-2 | Capacity coming online through Aug–Sep 2026 was already booked | "all capacity coming online until August to September 2026 has already been booked" |
| SA-rental-3 | DDR5 contract prices about 5× and LPDDR5 about 4× year on year | Free section |
| SA-rental-4 | Anthropic's run-rate went from $9B (end 2025) to over $30B within a quarter | Free section; unaudited |
| SA-rental-5 | Rental prices are more likely to keep rising than fall | "GPU rental pricing is more likely to continue rising than falling" |
Our notes#
- SA-rental-1 and SA-rental-2 are the key early warning for the bubble scenario. A glut would show first as
three-year-old GPUs renting for less. As of this article it was going the other way. See the live index
note (
gpu-index-h100.md). - SA-rental-4 is revenue reported without audit; treat it as direction, not a figure.