Every AI accelerator forward contract has a built-in obsolescence delta: the rate at which the underlying SKU's value depreciates as a newer generation ships into the market. For B200 systems with B300 already shipping in volume, the obsolescence curve is steeper than for, say, MI355X, which has no immediate successor on a public roadmap.
Mechanically: a B200 contract priced today for September delivery prices in the assumption that B300 supply will partially substitute for B200 demand by September. Different buyers price this differently. A tier-2 cloud with workloads pinned to B200's specific memory/interconnect characteristics will pay closer to spot; a buyer who could substitute will discount more aggressively.
What a forward market does is surface that disagreement. The spread between a buyer who must have B200 and one who could substitute becomes a tradable signal, and the curve becomes a public proxy for the obsolescence delta. That's load-bearing for procurement modeling, and increasingly load-bearing for the hyperscaler asset-management teams who are starting to think about their compute fleet the way an airline thinks about a 737 fleet.
This piece is the financial-modeling version. Includes a sample obsolescence-curve template.