More than Carbon: Cradle-to-Grave environmental impacts of GenAI training on the Nvidia A100 GPU

AI training has far broader environmental impacts than carbon alone. A full life‑cycle assessment of the Nvidia A100 shows that GPT‑4’s use phase drives most climate and fossil‑fuel impacts (96%), while manufacturing contributes heavily to toxicity and freshwater damage. The GPU chip is the largest source across many categories, and primary data reveals significant underestimation in areas like mineral and metal depletion (+33%). The study shows that Sustainable AI must look well beyond operational emissions