What is the price of Compute ? - Compute Futures + Implication for SK Hynix

Came across two articles today.

CME is going to launch a futures contract on compute..

https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/energy/power/compute-futures.html?redirect=/compute

Both Silicon Data H100 Rental Index Futures and Silicon Data B200 Rental Index Futures will track indexes measuring hourly rental GPU costs published by Silicon Data. Each contract will represent a month's worth of rent for the Nvidia H100, the chip central to today's AI ecosystem, and the next-generation Nvidia Blackwell B200, respectively.

And Nvidia is putting together a pool of $500bn to fund the build out of AI factories.

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-partners-with-apollo-blackrock-blackstone-brookfield-goldman-sachs-and-kkr-to-establish-ai-compute-infrastructure-financing-platforms-to-mobilize-over-500-billion-of-third-party-capital

https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2086934705207959965

Interesting developments for sure.....

Some observations:

1. Does it mean the hyperscalers are running out of financial capacity to finance their AI builds ?

2. Nvidia is "pushing" capital to the weaker players ? Say the neoclouds ?

3. If say a neocloud can hedge their GPU rental income, does it mean AI data centres can be financed easier than before ?

4. What does it mean if a data centre is using other chips ? Does it mean non-NVDA (think AMD) project will be harder to financed ?

5. Why use H100/B200 ? These are older chips whose value/processing power will lag as newer GPUs are introduced.

Implications ?

1. Base case is AI capX will likely grow in 2027, in line with different semi channel checks.

2. Likely will lead to over build at some point. Nvidia is pouring money into the fire. Say the smaller neoclouds like Bitdeer can have easier access to finance ?

3. The Compute Futures = Short idea in the future = Moore's law will kill the value of older GPUs once AI reaches a state of maturity i.e. less new use cases popping up ?

Action:

1. SK Hynix (stock) so far has stayed in the tank... Did not bounce....Maybe time to have a look because of stronger confidence in 2027 outlook. Plus it will buy back stocks at some point.

2. Worthwhile to study the Compute Futures... Almost a new asset class.....Potentially a long term short case ?