Show HN: Computable – Buy, sell, and redeem GPU for the exact weeks you want

7/21/2026 at 10:08:02 PM

Didn't sfcompute launch with a vision of something like this and then cancel it because CFTC decided it was running an unregulated futures exchange? How are you getting around regulatory issues like this?

by hazard

7/21/2026 at 11:19:58 PM

Good question. this is something we built around from day one. Users pay 100% up front for specific nodes on the exact weeks they want. No leverage, no margin, no cash settlement. This is honestly not that much different from you booking a hotel.

by yuansong98

7/21/2026 at 11:35:35 PM

What does "no cash settlement" mean? If I sell a reservation, do I not get cash?

by teraflop

7/22/2026 at 12:22:04 AM

So yes, you do get cash. when i said cash settlement, i was referring to how the contract itself ends, unrelated whether you can sell it. A cash-settled contract means it never delivers anything and at expiry it just pays out the difference between your price and an index price, which makes it a pure price bet.

on computable, whoever holds the reservation when the week arrives gets the actual nodes when they redeem for usage. so selling your reservation to someone else beforehand is no different from reselling a concert ticket. and when you sell, the buyer takes over the claim, you get their money, and the contract still ends with someone getting the GPUs.

hope that clears up.

by yuansong98

7/22/2026 at 2:52:19 AM

All the verifications without being able to see what it even does fully feels like pretty a big barrier, even more so than being login gated. Gives it a big banking/gambling vibe too.

Then again, I was only curious how it compares to other GPU rent options in general. Somebody going to bid on something right away might not care.

by flowerbreeze

7/22/2026 at 4:19:03 AM

Will imagine the team want to make sure they stay more compliant. Google login was easy enough for me though.

by spenceryang

7/22/2026 at 7:07:01 AM

[dead]

by flowerbreeze

7/22/2026 at 7:10:12 AM

Interesting approach. Who do you see as the primary users—AI startups, researchers, or individual developers? How do you ensure GPU availability matches reservations?

by carterEthan

7/21/2026 at 11:51:14 PM

How do you prevent sellers from fraudulently selling future capacity they don't actually have?

by Retr0id

7/22/2026 at 12:13:20 AM

Great question. When we list a capacity from a provider, the capacity lists only after it's contracted and attested, and the provider guarantee travels with the claim. If delivery fails, that's on us to remedy, not on the buyer to chase a stranger.

by yuansong98

7/22/2026 at 12:20:29 AM

So in other words, you're screwed?

by Retr0id

7/22/2026 at 12:25:52 AM

we are as screwed as going to a taylor swift concert if she doesnt show up

by yuansong98

7/22/2026 at 12:36:04 AM

More like if you resold tickets that turned out not to be valid, at the ticket gate. At scale.

by Retr0id

7/22/2026 at 2:11:18 AM

providers directly list on us and/or authorize us to resell and redeem. in other words, listing is not permissionless. hence the taylor swift anaolgy.

by yuansong98

7/21/2026 at 9:55:37 PM

Interesting approach. How do you ensure liquidity if buyers and sellers want different weeks? Is there a market maker, or is everything matched through the auction?

by paigexu522

7/21/2026 at 10:47:41 PM

I imagine they’re building the supply side as well, where you can bid your fixed GPU. My question with this stuff is how do I know my data is secure on these for-rent boxes? What steps are taken to sanitize the GPU between runs etc.

by leoqa

7/22/2026 at 12:23:12 AM

we take this pretty seriously. we lock down the nodes themselves so that only the hypervisor has direct access. and between customers, we don't just sanitize disks. we actually delete them entirely and spin up a fresh VM from a clean qcow2 base image, so no prior customer data persists.

by yuansong98

7/21/2026 at 11:41:36 PM

curious how you'd keep all parties winning at once on the platform (supply&demand& traders maybe?)

Are you planning to make money on float / spread / flat fee?

by aubreyzhang

7/22/2026 at 12:29:43 AM

tldr is that the game is not zero sum, it's against the waste in the current setup. Today capacity sits idle on one side while someone overpays for flexibility on the other. An opaque and fragmented market today creates a lot of dead weight loss. here' what we want to see: Providers can sell weeks forward at wholesale instead of letting them sit unsold. More of the calendar monetized, revenue known in advance. Great working capital. Buyers can pay for exactly the weeks you use, resell if they change their mind anytimes. providers want long commitments, buyers want short ones. So on Computable, whoever values January less sells it to whoever values it more, and both do better than the lease they'd have signed.

Traders can ofc buy and sell too. They are great for providers and buyers because they help the market run more efficiently.

by yuansong98

7/22/2026 at 12:03:14 AM

how do you deal with data security

by zuzululu

7/22/2026 at 12:14:58 AM

we lock down the nodes themselves so that only the hypervisor has direct access. we take this pretty seriously.

by yuansong98

7/22/2026 at 2:06:16 AM

State level actors will snoop the bus.

by kevin_thibedeau

7/22/2026 at 10:36:33 AM

You don't need to be a nation state to defeat this even if it's set up "properly", you can use low-cost interposer attacks like https://batteringram.eu/ to alias the guest's memory into another guest that you control.

by Retr0id

7/22/2026 at 9:50:53 AM

nice brother

by zeroday404

7/21/2026 at 10:30:23 PM

I need to login to see anything. I walk away.

by Lethalman

7/22/2026 at 2:11:40 AM

same, I closed that tab so fast

by tinyattackcat

7/22/2026 at 8:29:18 AM

[flagged]

by justacatbot

7/22/2026 at 3:30:29 AM

[flagged]

by TokenLat

7/22/2026 at 3:34:47 AM

[flagged]

by TokenLat