This Used Nvidia GPU Becomes a Fashionable Wallet

I never thought that best video cards It could have been a fashion trend, not to mention worse, but here we are. Over the weekend, a discarded Nvidia GT 730 GPU, a $20 used GPU that has been turned into a wallet, was listed on the website GPU Purse. You’ll have to shell out just $1,024 for the bag, which, according to the product page, fits a phone and comes with a long or short chain.

One look at the website is alarming, especially for a product that costs over $1,000, but there seems to be some legitimacy behind it. The Financial Times reports that GPU Purse is the brainchild of Tessa Barton, a New York Times alum and current pre-training engineer at Databricks. Barton reportedly rushed to open a Shopify store after a post on X (formerly Twitter) went viral last week, racking up over 1.4 million impressions.

#New York Fashion Week OZ24 @nvidia 🔋✨@tessybarton pic.twitter.com/JtEZgs7taV

— Christina Farhat (@farhatchristina) September 4, 2024

The GPU wallet could be real, and it could show up on your doorstep if you’re brave enough to place an order. It’s a total scam. Barton explained to the FT that the arbitrary price is two to the power of ten, presumably because powers of two are important for neural networks. The store is also offering a bag made from an Nvidia H100, which costs $65,536, or two bags at 16 power. There are currently no photos in this listing.

You could perhaps imagine the bag as some sort of limited-edition collectible: In the Shopify listing, Barton says it’s a “limited edition.” “I’m going to make about 10 more in the next few weeks.” The bag is still in stock, despite its price, so it doesn’t look like Barton has “10 more orders” yet.

As silly as it may seem because of the price, there is clearly a market for this kind of what Barton calls “incredibly fast fashion.” Barton says that at high-end Silicon Valley parties, especially since the advent of artificial intelligence and the sharp rise of Nvidia’s stock price, you will be looked down upon if you wear a fashion brand. “If you use a GPU bag, you will be approached… I don’t know how to explain how many men will talk to you,” Barton told the Financial Times.

Maybe if you frequent these parties and have some Nvidia stock lying around, a GPU wallet makes sense. Everyone else can put together their own GT 730 bag for $20 and a clear acrylic bag for $16 on Amazon that looks remarkably similar to the one Barton is currently selling.