flâneur

The birth of GPU futures - by Dave Friedman

davefriedman.substack.com · 1,551 words · saved by 1 readers

We are in the middle of the largest capital expenditure cycle in the history of computing. The hyperscalers—Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle—are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI data centers. These campuses cost $10-20 billion apiece, and the growth trajectory shows no sing of slowing. For now, these buildouts are financed on balance sheet or via corporate debt issuance. But if history is any guide, such enormous flows of capital inevitably attract hedging markets. Commodities as diverse as oil, power, freight, and bandwidth all went through the same cycle: bespoke bilateral deals at first, then forward contracts, then standardized futures. A futures exchange for GPU compute may sound exotic, but it is exactly how financial markets have evolved every time a scarce, volatile, and capital-intensive input became critical to industrial growth. The conditions for a GPU futures market are already forming. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that a futures market is

We are in the middle of the largest capital expenditure cycle in the history of computing. The hyperscalers—Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle—are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI data centers. These campuses cost $10-20 billion apiece, and the growth trajectory shows no sing of slowing. For now, these buildouts are financed on balance sheet or via corporate debt issuance. But if history is any guide, such enormous flows of capital inevitably attract hedging markets. Commodities as diverse as oil, power, freight, and bandwidth all went through the same cycle:…

related reading