Implied GPU Life
The index level is a joint statement about useful life and operator margin. Solve for the floor.
Listed futures from 05 October 2026, with over-the-counter forwards and residual value swaps already trading. A new asset class is forming on an exchange timetable.
Proved in The MarketNVIDIA and six asset managers are financing compute like energy infrastructure. Lenders, lessors and guarantors carry the exposure and must mark, hedge and transfer it.
Proved in the NVIDIA caseA developer that controls time-to-power and hedges the energy-to-compute spread adds roughly ten points of equity return, and every project can carry that overlay.
Proved in the developer caseAn independent desk with physical-layer fluency, no chip inventory and no index affiliation. It grows with every financing and every project as the listed market deepens.
Large-load interconnection runs three to four years in ERCOT and approaches seven in PJM. Time-to-energization is the binding constraint, and it anchors the forward curve.
Compute revenue per megawatt-hour of facility energy, less power, operations and full capital recovery. Power is under three percent of it. GPU amortization is about thirty-five.
Utilization, rental rate and useful life set it, which is why it is marked and hedged like a commodity margin rather than booked as a real estate yield.
| Sleeve | What It Trades | Why The Spread Exists |
|---|---|---|
| S1 · Curve Relative Value | H100 and B200, first to third maturities | The curve reprices faster than the physical delivery schedule standing behind it |
| S2 · Cross-Generation Ratio | B200 against H100 as a ratio spread | Throughput parity anchors the ratio to silicon rather than to sentiment |
| S3 · Average-Settlement Decay | Variance decay inside arithmetic average settlement | Averaging kills variance on a cube law, and the option surface prices it late |
| S4 · Index Against Physical | Listed index against public operator economics | The desk transacts on both sides of that basis and therefore sees both prices |
| S5 · Gas And Power Calendars | NYMEX natural gas and Micro NG | Liquid ballast, and the other half of the spark spread |
A relative-value book in H100 and B200 compute futures, with natural gas and power calendars as liquid ballast.
Regime research, index diligence, and mapping a client’s realized rental rate to the settlement index before it can hedge with it.
Operator hedging, lender risk transfer and offtake collars for financing platforms, special purpose vehicles and neoclouds.
Energy-to-compute arbitrage for new data center projects: time-to-power, a hedged spread, cascading offtakes and a two-vehicle capital stack.
One regime model, one metric stack, three derived indicators, systematic execution, independent risk, compliance and an information barrier.
What one MWh of facility energy earns after power, operations and full capital recovery.
The index level is a joint statement about useful life and operator margin. Solve for the floor.
Capital providers need a price to lend against, and the price layer needs hedgers to become liquid. If you are financing, building, operating or buying AI compute, we should talk.
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