4 Comments
User's avatar
ThePenStock's avatar

The instrument-level case is airtight. But a lender underwriting tranche 4, or a rating agency taking a consolidated view of the operator, eventually has to look across all outstanding SPVs at once. In a stress scenario that means valuing GPU collateral across multiple vintages and hardware generations simultaneously. What’s the input for that analysis today — and possibly more importantly, who’s providing it?

Dave Friedman's avatar

It might be a company like Silicon Data which certifies the GPUs of certain neoclouds like Lambda Labs.

ThePenStock's avatar

I agree. My concern is their methodology is proprietary and they have commercial relationships with the neoclouds they certify. Post-LIBOR, that distinction matters — especially if those inputs end up driving a covenant. What this market needs is a genuine third-party reference rate with open methodology and clean governance. And as you have detailed the need is growing quickly.

Dave Friedman's avatar

Well the general observation here is that the market for AI compute finance is nascent and immature. Better to have a solution that is imperfect than no solution at all.