Compute Exchange#

Carmen Li (Compute Exchange / Silicon Data, CEO)

• Why: Completes the compute-market arc with the two concrete artifacts a capacity planner can use today: a neutral RFQ marketplace for reserved/forward GPU capacity, and observed term structures with implied forward curves.
• What: Compute Exchange is a deliberately inventory-free marketplace (100+ verified providers, 80,000+ GPUs claimed in supply, ex-China, 24-hour RFQ turnaround, verification of UIDs/inventory/benchmarks for existing capacity and purchase orders/permits for forward capacity; KYB/KYC on buyers). It covers three layers: reserved GPU (one node / one month minimum), forward contracts on GPUs and tokens (a "token forward" reserves a dedicated model deployment with fixed quantization and SLA), and a secondary hardware market — where scarce gear has traded above MSRP (her COVID-used-car analogy). Silicon Data provides the indices CME will settle compute futures on (H100 neocloud on-demand rate, B200), with actual settlement announced as weeks away at talk time.
• How: The interesting data: the H100 reserve term curve went from downward-sloping last year (longer commitments cheaper per hour) to shifted-up and flattened/contango — longer terms no longer earn a discount, implying the market expects prices to rise over the next 36 months (implied forwards from the term structure, treasury-futures methodology). Residual-value modeling across A100/H100/B200 shows older hardware holding more economic value than straight-line 5-year depreciation implies. Duration risk framing: servers financed over 5–6 years but contracted for 3 leaves years exposed — hence swap and block-trade interest.
• Where applicable: Company-reported marketplace figures and index methodology (her own companies); term-structure observations depend on their sampling. The residual-value vs accounting-depreciation divergence is directly relevant to anyone writing GPU financing or procurement models. Partly a platform demo, but with genuinely new market data.