Why Compute Still Trades in Group Chats — Affaan Mustafa & Alejandro Soumah Fernandez, Jump Trading

Affaan Mustafa and Alejandro Soumah Fernandez lead compute trading at Jump Trading. They explain why most GPU capacity still trades out of public view: private quotes, bilateral contracts and deals struck over Slack, X and Telegram. They look at why GPU prices have held up even as token prices fell, how chips, power, buildings and capital all feed into the price of a GPU hour, and why mid-size companies get squeezed when a 15 to 25% prepayment on a three-year contract can eat a whole funding round. They also cover brokers, exchanges, futures and flexible contracts, export controls, and why the market needs standard contracts and well-capitalized players to bridge buyers and suppliers. Chapters: - 00:00 Intro - 00:28 What a dark pool of compute is - 02:26 Cheaper tokens, more usage - 03:31 Why GPU prices held up - 05:08 Chips, power, buildings and capital - 06:06 Who's in the market - 07:32 The middle-market financing gap - 10:38 Build, colocate or rent - 12:50 Compute procurement and runway - 13:27 Who places capacity - 15:39 Why every deal is bespoke - 17:18 Structures for mismatched risk - 18:15 Policy and export controls - 19:17 Where the opportunity is Affaan Mustafa & Alejandro Soumah Fernandez, Jump Trading: https://www.jumptrading.com Join us in SF for the second annual AIE CODE summit: https://aie.codes our last flagship summit of 2026. Applications live now!