For now, we are focusing on institutions, since most of this hardware has strict export controls. We deal with all sizes though, we can do a single card to 1024 servers. Can always reach out to us to see if a specific request would fit in the marketplace or not

We ask any seller to post the condition and testing reports for the hardware they sell, so there is no info asymmetry. As long as there is a willing buyer and a willing seller at the conditions specified, transaction goes through! We deal with A100s all the time.

Nice thing about these chips is that they have built in software that allows you to see the condition. The secondary market also supports the circular economy, most of these servers are proving to be useful longer than what the market initially thought. There is always a case to go with used equipment instead of new ones.

We already support these!

We use Stripe Connect to transfer the funds, and it is not a waivable process. In addition to KYC documentation, the team personally meets with any participant we onboard to the marketplace. We also have the ability to manually intervene in transactions if need be, but so far we have not had any transaction issues. It almost reminds me of how people were super skeptical of Uber and Airbnb when they first launched, but human trust goes a long way, sometimes further than we originally anticipate.

One thing that guides how we think about this is: we will never ask you to make the payment before you feel comfortable with the counterparty you are dealing with.

Those work with rental agreements on compute, we directly transact the hardware itself. Instead of per hr pricing, we do physical unit prices. We help with the shipment and clearing process too.

This is about buying hardware, not renting it.

We do both! Solving for the forward curve has very interesting applications in the GPU market, as depreciation is a big factor.

We have credit limits/margins in place to be posted for any forward trades which helps with the default risk, similar to other commodity markets. Users can enter the delivery timing details as they create a request, and dealers will price accordingly.

Most of the hardware has super long wait times right now (16-24 weeks), and there is no market structure today that allows to price the differential between a spot, immediately available B300 server vs one with 16-24 week lead time. Our marketplace allows to observe that.

The market is so new and growing that we sometimes end up working together with competitors to satisfy some of the requests. Would be great to know who it is!

We actually had many rental marketplaces that asked to work with us and validated the need for a hardware marketplace.

glad you like it! we aggregate de-identified pricing from transactions we observe, and whenever you create a quote, you will see an indicative range of what we think your config is worth. This can deviate from the price you get based on the liquidity in the market, but from our experience, it has been super helpful especially for end users.

Anyone we onboard to the marketplace goes through strict know-your-business checks. We never release any payment to the sellers before a transaction is inspected and verified by the buyer, essentially like an escrow service but for free (instead of around 7% at escrow.com).

Our primary focus is on trading the physical hardware, most of the marketplaces we see are rental focused. Our thesis is as open source models become stronger and stronger, owning your own hardware will become more prevalent

vast.ai rents. this one sells