Practice focus · Compute
Compute is becoming a commodity. We work on the structure that makes it tradeable.
Compute is the first genuinely new major commodity in decades, and it is being financialised in public, quickly, by venues that disagree about almost everything — what the benchmark should measure, whether it should settle in cash or in racks, and whether it should be priced per GPU-hour or per unit of energy.
This is the most sustained body of work on the site. It spans index construction and methodology critique, physical delivery mechanics, forward-curve technology, and the basis against the power markets that fuel it — and it runs on primary data: measured GPU power traces, real settlement records, and public interconnection queues.
The body of work
Four threads, one complex.
Index design & methodology
Five venues are racing to own the compute benchmark on four different index technologies. We have specified the hierarchy, read the methodologies against each other, and measured what their denominators actually embed.
Duty factors 0.795–0.880; nameplate overstates energy 12–21%
What normalization removes as noise becomes tradeable basis
Six-level hierarchy: benchmark / grade / region / firmness / tenor / venue
Delivery & market plumbing
A cash-settled contract is a bet on an index; a contract that converts into racks is forward procurement. EFP mechanics are the connective tissue, and they decide whether hedgers show up at all.
Forward curves & price discovery
Kalshi got executable forwards live before either announced futures contract listed. Four venues, three curve technologies, two settlement philosophies — and three of four settling on the same index family.
The compute–power basis
Compute is congealed electricity. The supply curve is sitting in public interconnection queues, and the fuel leg, the shape leg, and the compute leg now all quote on listed venues.
The through-line
Why these connect.
The unit is contested
Per GPU-hour or per unit of energy? Assessed or transacted? Every index decision relocates an assumption rather than removing it, and the residual is basis somebody will own.
The physical leg decides adoption
Hedgers do not participate in markets they cannot take delivery from. Whichever venue connects paper to capacity first sets the delivery spec and the basis conventions everyone else references.
Power is the binding constraint
Compute economics resolve into energy cost, shape, and interconnection. The compute complex cannot be analysed without the power complex — which is why both live here.
Working on a compute product?
Index construction, contract specification, delivery mechanics, or the power basis underneath — this is the practice’s deepest domain, and the tooling already exists to move quickly.