
Latent Space: The AI Engineer PodcastOct 20 36 min
The Programmable Data Center — Evan Conrad, SF Compute
- The company SF Compute is building a market for compute capacity that emphasizes physical settlement, drawing parallels to commodity futures markets and differentiating from cash-settled derivatives.
- The compute market is characterized by complex heterogeneity, where factors like chip generation, VRAM, NVLink, and even firmware bugs create distinct "grades" of compute, making standardization challenging.
- SF Compute aims to act as an independent market maker, enabling financing of GPU clusters by providing liquidity and operational expertise without owning the underlying hardware, which distinguishes them from hyperscalers like Nvidia.







