The Programmable Data Center — Evan Conrad, SF Compute

GPU compute is bought and sold like a commodity, but delivering it is a lot messier than trading a contract. Evan Conrad of SF Compute joins swyx at AI Engineer New York to explain the market they’re building—and why he thinks it needs an independent operator. We cover: • Why SF Compute had to build cloud operations to deliver the GPUs it trades • How interruptions, storage and hardware generations affect compute prices • Why batch and live inference need different contract terms • Physical versus cash settlement, and the risk of trading a price disconnected from actual GPUs • Why NVIDIA and