This 2020 Nvidia chip is still going strong. That matters for the AI boom.

AI cloud company CoreWeave just offered fresh evidence in one of the biggest debates hanging over the AI boom: How long can AI chips stay useful and keep generating revenue?

The AI cloud company recently signed a contract to rent out Nvidia A100 GPUs well into 2029, CoreWeave Chief Financial Officer Nitin Agrawal told analysts late Tuesday. Nvidia introduced the A100 in 2020.

That means customers are committing to use these chips for running AI about nine years after their launch.

This matters because investors have been fiercely debating how quickly AI hardware loses its economic value. Critics and short sellers have argued that rapid advances…