ComputeAssay

The delivery layer for compute

The exchanges built a price for compute.
Nobody defined the product.

Cash-settled GPU futures are listing on four venues. All of them price the GPU-hour. None can deliver one — because a GPU-hour is not a fungible unit, and whether one cluster can substitute for another is a networking question the financial layer cannot answer. Compute Assay is the specification, registry, and weekly report that define the deliverable.

16
providers surveyed
70
offerings graded
6.2×
same-chip price spread
Oct 5
first futures list (CME)
ASSAY-1 — the specification
The record format, headline metrics (CSD·NBD·DCB·PFI), workload classes, substitutability grades, and verification harness that define compute as a deliverable good. Versioned like an RFC. Free forever.
The Delivered Compute Report
Weekly. What GPU capacity actually exists, what it costs, and whether it can do the job the price implies. Every row sourced.
Compute has no kilowatt-hour
The frame: why compute is pre-kWh, and the three-step path from a unit of capacity to a unit of delivered intelligence.
The deliverability gap
40% of surveyed capacity cannot verifiably run the workload its price implies. 9% publishes nothing about interconnect at all. That opacity is the market's missing half.

Get the Delivered Compute Report

One email a week: headline prices, deliverability grades, one teardown, and the gap between the index and what you can actually take delivery of.

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What an assay is

In every physical commodity market, an assay is the test that determines grade and purity — the reason a buyer in one port can trust a cargo loaded in another. Compute has never had one. Eight H100s on shared Ethernet and eight H100s in an NVLink domain with non-blocking InfiniBand sell under the same name at prices that differ by multiples, and the difference is written nowhere a contract can cite. ASSAY-1 is that test, for compute: published free, graded conservatively from what sellers state in writing, and revised in the open.