At the end Nvidia retains ownership of what are probably very low value assets.
Contrast that with car leases: there is a robust market for used cars.
Nvidia is in effect financing the GPUs by not requiring the full payment up front.
Do the lease payments add up to the total cost?
EDIT: Interesting note
> CPUs historically have 5-10 years of useful life , while GPUs in AI datacenters last 1-3 years in practice , despite 6-year accounting assumptions.30,31 Evidence from Google architects shows GPUs at 60-70% utilization survive 1-2 years , with 3 years maximum.31 Meta’s Llama 3 training experienced 9% annual GPU failure rates , suggesting 27% failure over 3 years.31