Will the model even be competitive in 10 months though? Seems like models that reach top 20 on OpenRouter see 50% of all token spend by day 80, and 80% by day 180.
As long as the hardware can be used on newer models, hardware costs can be recouped running a future model.
But if they're hoping to recoup non-recurring engineering costs rather than just hardware costs, they do need to consider the useful lifetime of the specific model.