Market benchmarks / compute economics / market structure
The price of compute, tracked.
GPU rental markets, market-implied forward curves, chip economics, token prices, and the gigawatt buildout — one independent desk for the machines that make intelligence.
01Forward curves
What the market thinks compute will cost
Instrument-specific near anchors, monthly-average tenors through Jul ’27, and the shape of implied supply pressure ahead.
● Market-implied term structure
Implied forward curve
First point is a weekly exact-time anchor (RTX 5090: front-month monthly average); remaining points are monthly-average contracts — shown in $/GPU·hr or % vs anchor
Kalshi event ladders referenced to Ornn. Raw implied median = the 50% bid/ask-mid crossing; monthly back points use two [1,2,1] smoothing passes from the third month onward. Hollow points are thin or interpolated.
How to read this curve
The shape is the story. H200 trades backwardated; A100 sits in contango; RTX 5090 eases lower out the strip; B200 and H100 are flat, priced to hold through Jul ’27.
Replay the archived market-implied term structure.
Computed signals
The market in four numbers
Derived from the current datasets on every build — never hand-entered.
- B200 on-demand specialist median
- $6.92/GPU·hr
- +20% y/yBlackwell demand outran supply
- NVIDIA data-center revenue · FY27 Q1
- $75.2B
- +92% y/yNext-quarter guide $91B total
- Tracked AI capex · 2026E
- $780B
- +66% vs ’25MSFT · GOOG · META · AMZN · ORCL
- GPT-4-class token floor
- $0.18/1M
- −99.5% since Mar ’23DeepSeek V4 Flash · blended 3:1
Today’s read · market snapshot JUL 31 2026 · 20:06 UTC
Compute is becoming a commodity — the fourth factor of production — and for the first time it trades like one.
RTX 5090 repriced +7% since Jul 17. Its curve is easing: the strip drifts lower into the back months. H100 is the anchor of the board: ~$2.68 through Jul ’27 on a flat curve.
The monthly-average anchor is $0.60; the Jul ’27 tenor implies $0.55.
The marketplace floor moved −3.9% over the latest three-quarter window to $1.73/GPU·hr.
The GPT-4-class blended floor is now about 210× cheaper than launch at $0.18 per million tokens.
CME Group is set to list Silicon Data H100 and B200 rental-index futures on NYMEX, pending CFTC review. Venue monitor
02GPU cloud
Renting an H100, 2023 → today
US$ per GPU-hour. From $12 at peak scarcity to a stable ~$4; primary on-demand now starts at $1.99, with separately labeled marketplace access near $1.73.
H100 SXM · provider and marketplace price
Quarterly midpoints by provider class
Provider list prices, launch announcements, and archived snapshots; legacy quarterly midpoints ±15%. Current 2026-07-06 quote-table aggregates are provisional unless an evidence record pins an exact archived Git object.
03The macro picture
Compute demand is compounding
The frontier training-compute trend runs at 4.4× a year; tracked 2026E capex is +66% versus 2025.
Training compute of notable models
Total FLOP, log scale — estimates marked
Epoch AI estimates and lab disclosures; estimated points carry wide error bars.
Big-tech capital expenditure
US$B per calendar year (2026 = guidance)
Company earnings releases and SEC filings; Microsoft includes finance leases; Oracle fiscal year mapped.
04Inference
Intelligence, repriced monthly
GPT-4-level capability became roughly 210× cheaper since launch. Then 2026 flagships reintroduced a frontier premium.
Cheapest GPT-4-class · blended
$0.18/1M
−99.5% since Mar ’23 · DeepSeek V4 Flash
OpenAI flagship · GPT-5.5
$11.25/1M
+227% vs GPT-5 · Flagship list price rose in Apr 2026
Batch & cached reality
−50 / −90%
Batch APIs ~50% off list; cached input ~90% off — production pays below list
05Quick answers
The methodology, without the footnotes
The three definitions readers need before comparing the curves, provider classes, or token-price series.
How are the GPU forward curves derived?
From Kalshi event-contract ladders on GPU rental prices referenced to Ornn's hourly index. The first point is a future exact-time weekly implied median for B200, H200, H100, and A100; RTX 5090 uses its front-month monthly-average implied median. Each raw implied level is the ladder's 50% crossing. The monthly strip receives two [1,2,1] smoothing passes from the third monthly tenor onward. Thin and interpolated points are labeled; none are current spot or executable quotes.
What does the blended token price mean?
Blended price = (3 × input + output) ÷ 4 per million tokens, reflecting a typical 3:1 read/write mix at standard list rates.
What are the provider classes?
Under primary on-demand policy primary-on-demand-v1, hyperscaler is the undiscounted big-cloud provider-list floor and specialist is the AI-native provider-list median. Marketplace access is the separately labeled open-market floor on community hardware.
06Go deeper
Explore the full desk
01
GPU Cloud
Primary on-demand rates for 16 chips across 19+ providers, with separately labeled marketplace access and history.
H100 on-demand from $1.99/hr
02
Hardware
Specs and economics for every accelerator that matters, V100 → Rubin.
Dense BF16 $/PFLOP·hr
03
Inference
Token prices across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and DeepSeek.
Floor $0.18/1M
04
Buildout
Capex, NVIDIA’s run-rate, and every gigawatt-class cluster.
~32 GW frontier pipeline