{
  "publication_date": "2026-11-03",
  "observation_date": "2026-11-03",
  "corrections": [],
  "correction_policy": "Append dated corrections; preserve previous versions.",
  "license_status": "PCT original text: unpublished, license not yet selected. Source material remains owned by its rights holders; no blanket republication permission assumed.",
  "id": "pct-2026-11-03-company-sfcompute",
  "content_type": "company_profile",
  "title": "SF Compute’s resale promise needs a denominator",
  "editorial_voice": "Company Desk | AI-assisted, explanatory",
  "body": "San Francisco Compute packages GPU rental with the ability to resell reservation hours that a workload no longer needs. The company says it builds and operates clusters, including infrastructure owned by partners, keeping physical delivery alongside its marketplace. [s1, s2]\n\nFinancing matters. On September 10, SFC announced $245 million of B300 capacity agreements with one unnamed AI company: two contracts lasting 36 months. That is announced contract value, not demonstrated revenue or cash collection. Capacity was scheduled to arrive through the fourth quarter and into 2027. [s3]\n\nIts September customer account describes Standard Intelligence reselling off-peak hours and Roboflow buying shorter reservations. This is the market: one team’s unused time becomes another team’s burst capacity. [s4]\n\nBuyers should interrogate the denominator behind SFC’s reported 25% average recovery through resale. Consider a simplified example: reselling one quarter of a reservation at its original hourly rate recovers one quarter of the bill, while surrendering one quarter of the hours. If the remaining hours are fully used, the price per used hour is unchanged before fees. Resale saves money relative to leaving those hours idle; it does not automatically make productive compute cheaper. [s5]\n\nThe current documentation supplies another qualification. Sell orders need a matching buyer. Proceeds arrive as platform credits after variable fees, and selling allocated time can terminate instances. Recovery is conditional, not a guaranteed cancellation payment. [s6, s7]\n\nPCT’s assessment: SFC is worth watching as an operator that packages capacity with resale flexibility. The missing evidence matters: disclosed customer concentration, realized resale volumes, fee schedules, and fill rates across hardware and delivery windows. The next useful proof is evidence that customers can repeatedly resell unwanted capacity, net of fees, without sacrificing the reliability their workloads require when demand shifts. Those measurements would reveal whether customers still recover meaningful value when many sellers compete for fewer buyers simultaneously. []",
  "research": {
    "id": "san-francisco-compute",
    "company": "San Francisco Compute",
    "short_name": "SFC",
    "as_of": "2026-11-03",
    "website": "https://sfcompute.com",
    "editorial_angle": "Resale flexibility can reduce stranded reservation cost, but a recovered share of purchase spend is not the same metric as a lower price per productive GPU-hour.",
    "identity": {
      "category": "GPU cloud operator and reservation-resale marketplace",
      "leadership": "Evan Conrad is identified as CEO in the September 9 announcement; Eric Park is identified as CTO on the cluster-build page.",
      "legal_entity_caution": "Public marketplace terms name San Francisco Compute Trading Company LLC. Do not assume that entity owns all infrastructure or signs every enterprise agreement.",
      "source_ids": [
        "s2",
        "s5",
        "s8"
      ]
    },
    "business_model": [
      {
        "claim": "SFC combines technical operation with a market for time-bound GPU reservations. It also builds and operates clusters for capital providers who own the hardware.",
        "status": "Company-described",
        "source_ids": [
          "s1",
          "s2"
        ]
      },
      {
        "claim": "Asset owners can serve their own customers, sell through SFC, or combine both. The build-to-spec offer leaves hardware and residual value with the customer.",
        "status": "Product offer, not verified deployment economics",
        "source_ids": [
          "s2"
        ]
      },
      {
        "claim": "SFC charges sellers a platform fee on filled resale orders; current documentation describes a fixed amount per node-hour plus a percentage of sale value. Rates can differ by organization and change. Buy orders have no fee according to the Orders page.",
        "status": "Documented mechanics",
        "source_ids": [
          "s6",
          "s7"
        ]
      },
      {
        "claim": "The company describes providers receiving a share of resale fees in addition to underlying contract revenue. Public sources reviewed do not establish SFC’s consolidated take rate or gross margin.",
        "status": "Company-described revenue mechanism; financial outcome unknown",
        "source_ids": [
          "s4"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "customers": [
      {
        "name": "Standard Intelligence",
        "relationship": "SFC case study says it resells off-peak capacity to support peak-sized reservations.",
        "evidence_level": "Vendor-hosted named customer account",
        "source_ids": [
          "s4"
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "Roboflow",
        "relationship": "SFC case study says it buys shorter GPU reservations for larger jobs.",
        "evidence_level": "Vendor-hosted named customer account",
        "source_ids": [
          "s4"
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "Undisclosed AI company",
        "relationship": "SFC announced $245m across two 36-month dedicated B300 cluster agreements, $122.5m each.",
        "evidence_level": "Company announcement; contracts and customer identity not verified",
        "source_ids": [
          "s3"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "financial_signals": [
      {
        "date": "2025-11-26",
        "claim": "Announced $40m Series A at $300m valuation, co-led by DCVC and Wing, with Electric Capital and Alt Capital participating.",
        "interpretation": "Historical financing announcement, not current enterprise value, revenue, cash balance, or total lifetime funding.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s9",
          "s10"
        ]
      },
      {
        "date": "2026-09-10",
        "claim": "The B300 announcement projected capacity arriving through Q4 2026 and into 2027.",
        "interpretation": "Forward delivery statement. Completion as of November 3 was not established in this research.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s3"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "product_and_limits": [
      {
        "claim": "VM, bare-metal and managed-Slurm options are publicly advertised.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s12"
        ]
      },
      {
        "claim": "Orders are pinned to one hardware SKU; documented node units contain eight GPUs. A market quote therefore needs hardware and a delivery window, not merely a GPU name.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s7"
        ],
        "status": "Documented mechanics plus inference"
      },
      {
        "claim": "Sell orders can remain unmatched. A fill removes allocation and may terminate instances; a sale is an operational change, not only a billing adjustment.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s6",
          "s7"
        ],
        "status": "Documented mechanics"
      },
      {
        "claim": "Resale produces platform credits after fees. Cash withdrawal rights or timing were not established in the reviewed sources.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s6"
        ],
        "status": "Documented credit treatment; cash convertibility unknown"
      },
      {
        "claim": "September 25 release places Elastic InfiniBand Partitions in public preview and requires physically colocated instances. Do not reuse older FAQ wording as a current blanket statement about VM InfiniBand availability.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s11",
          "s12"
        ],
        "status": "Release state and source conflict"
      },
      {
        "claim": "Published terms require prior company authorization for resale and written consent to copy or redistribute market data. Confirm the actual applicable agreement before building a commercial feed.",
        "source_ids": [
          "s8"
        ],
        "status": "Contractual diligence point, not legal advice"
      }
    ],
    "facts_inferences_and_unknowns": {
      "company_claim": "September 9 claim: on-platform customers recover an average 25% of purchase spend through resale. Treat as company-reported, not independently audited or guaranteed.",
      "original_analysis": "If 25% of purchased hours are sold at the original rate, cost falls 25% but retained hours also fall 25%. With full use of retained time and no fees, price per used hour is unchanged. The benefit is avoided waste relative to retaining idle time.",
      "unknowns": [
        "Customer concentration by recognized revenue, bookings or resale participation.",
        "Aggregate revenue, gross margin, debt exposure and actual take rate.",
        "Resale fill rates, volume, time to sale and bid depth by SKU and exact delivery window.",
        "Distribution, sample size, observation period and weighting behind the reported 25% average.",
        "Cash convertibility of resale credits and account-specific fee schedules.",
        "Whether announced B300 delivery milestones have been achieved."
      ],
      "source_ids": [
        "s5",
        "s6",
        "s7"
      ]
    },
    "editorial_controls": [
      "Use 'SFC says' for contract values, customer usage and company performance statistics.",
      "Do not label $245m as revenue, cash received, annual recurring revenue, or total backlog.",
      "Do not equate resale rights with guaranteed liquidity, refundability, or risk elimination.",
      "Do not identify the unnamed buyer or infer its concentration percentage.",
      "Do not repeat 'first', 'only', near-100% utilization, or high-liquidity claims as established facts.",
      "No live price, orderbook depth, transaction execution, customer contact, account creation, or login was attempted."
    ],
    "article": {
      "title": "SF Compute’s resale promise needs a denominator",
      "byline": "PCT Research Desk | AI-assisted analysis",
      "date": "2026-11-03",
      "word_count": 300,
      "paragraphs": [
        {
          "text": "San Francisco Compute packages GPU rental with the ability to resell reservation hours that a workload no longer needs. The company says it builds and operates clusters, including infrastructure owned by partners, keeping physical delivery alongside its marketplace.",
          "source_ids": [
            "s1",
            "s2"
          ]
        },
        {
          "text": "Financing matters. On September 10, SFC announced $245 million of B300 capacity agreements with one unnamed AI company: two contracts lasting 36 months. That is announced contract value, not demonstrated revenue or cash collection. Capacity was scheduled to arrive through the fourth quarter and into 2027.",
          "source_ids": [
            "s3"
          ]
        },
        {
          "text": "Its September customer account describes Standard Intelligence reselling off-peak hours and Roboflow buying shorter reservations. This is the market: one team’s unused time becomes another team’s burst capacity.",
          "source_ids": [
            "s4"
          ]
        },
        {
          "text": "Buyers should interrogate the denominator behind SFC’s reported 25% average recovery through resale. Consider a simplified example: reselling one quarter of a reservation at its original hourly rate recovers one quarter of the bill, while surrendering one quarter of the hours. If the remaining hours are fully used, the price per used hour is unchanged before fees. Resale saves money relative to leaving those hours idle; it does not automatically make productive compute cheaper.",
          "source_ids": [
            "s5"
          ],
          "inference": "The example is original illustrative arithmetic, assumes equal purchase/resale hourly rates and zero fees, and is not a company performance estimate."
        },
        {
          "text": "The current documentation supplies another qualification. Sell orders need a matching buyer. Proceeds arrive as platform credits after variable fees, and selling allocated time can terminate instances. Recovery is conditional, not a guaranteed cancellation payment.",
          "source_ids": [
            "s6",
            "s7"
          ]
        },
        {
          "text": "PCT’s assessment: SFC is worth watching as an operator that packages capacity with resale flexibility. The missing evidence matters: disclosed customer concentration, realized resale volumes, fee schedules, and fill rates across hardware and delivery windows. The next useful proof is evidence that customers can repeatedly resell unwanted capacity, net of fees, without sacrificing the reliability their workloads require when demand shifts. Those measurements would reveal whether customers still recover meaningful value when many sellers compete for fewer buyers simultaneously.",
          "source_ids": [],
          "inference": "Original desk assessment. Missing evidence means not established in the public sources reviewed, not a claim that it does not exist."
        }
      ],
      "body_markdown": "San Francisco Compute packages GPU rental with the ability to resell reservation hours that a workload no longer needs. The company says it builds and operates clusters, including infrastructure owned by partners, keeping physical delivery alongside its marketplace. [About San Francisco Compute](https://sfcompute.com/about), [Build your cluster](https://sfcompute.com/clusters-to-spec)\n\nFinancing matters. On September 10, SFC announced $245 million of B300 capacity agreements with one unnamed AI company: two contracts lasting 36 months. That is announced contract value, not demonstrated revenue or cash collection. Capacity was scheduled to arrive through the fourth quarter and into 2027. [San Francisco Compute sells $245M worth of compute](https://sfcompute.com/news/tcv-q3-2026)\n\nIts September customer account describes Standard Intelligence reselling off-peak hours and Roboflow buying shorter reservations. This is the market: one team’s unused time becomes another team’s burst capacity. [Standard Intelligence and Roboflow access larger GPU clusters through SF Compute’s resale market](https://sfcompute.com/news/scaling-with-gpu-resale)\n\nBuyers should interrogate the denominator behind SFC’s reported 25% average recovery through resale. Consider a simplified example: reselling one quarter of a reservation at its original hourly rate recovers one quarter of the bill, while surrendering one quarter of the hours. If the remaining hours are fully used, the price per used hour is unchanged before fees. Resale saves money relative to leaving those hours idle; it does not automatically make productive compute cheaper. [The average customer now saves 25% with SFC](https://sfcompute.com/news/realized-discount)\n\nThe current documentation supplies another qualification. Sell orders need a matching buyer. Proceeds arrive as platform credits after variable fees, and selling allocated time can terminate instances. Recovery is conditional, not a guaranteed cancellation payment. [Sell unused compute time](https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/guides/reselling), [Orders](https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/orders)\n\nPCT’s assessment: SFC is worth watching as an operator that packages capacity with resale flexibility. The missing evidence matters: disclosed customer concentration, realized resale volumes, fee schedules, and fill rates across hardware and delivery windows. The next useful proof is evidence that customers can repeatedly resell unwanted capacity, net of fees, without sacrificing the reliability their workloads require when demand shifts. Those measurements would reveal whether customers still recover meaningful value when many sellers compete for fewer buyers simultaneously."
    },
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "s1",
        "title": "About San Francisco Compute",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/about",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company description",
        "supports": "Cluster operation and partner-owned infrastructure model."
      },
      {
        "id": "s2",
        "title": "Build your cluster",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/clusters-to-spec",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company product page",
        "supports": "Customers own hardware and residual value; SFC designs, builds, operates, and offers routes to market."
      },
      {
        "id": "s3",
        "title": "San Francisco Compute sells $245M worth of compute",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/tcv-q3-2026",
        "published": "2026-09-10",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company announcement",
        "supports": "Two 36-month B300 agreements, unnamed customer, announced delivery timing. Not independent contract verification."
      },
      {
        "id": "s4",
        "title": "Standard Intelligence and Roboflow access larger GPU clusters through SF Compute’s resale market",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/scaling-with-gpu-resale",
        "published": "2026-09-28",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company case study with named customer quotations",
        "supports": "Reseller and short-term buyer examples; provider share of resale fees. Vendor-hosted evidence, not audited customer usage."
      },
      {
        "id": "s5",
        "title": "The average customer now saves 25% with SFC",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/realized-discount",
        "published": "2026-09-09",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company performance claim and illustrative guide",
        "supports": "25% average claimed realized discount; its example uses purchased GPU-hours. Does not establish a future guaranteed result."
      },
      {
        "id": "s6",
        "title": "Sell unused compute time",
        "url": "https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/guides/reselling",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Product documentation",
        "supports": "Variable fixed-per-node-hour and percentage fees; proceeds as credits; no buyer guarantee; workload consequences."
      },
      {
        "id": "s7",
        "title": "Orders",
        "url": "https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/orders",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Product documentation",
        "supports": "SKU-specific orders; eight-GPU nodes; no buy-order fees; partial fills and termination mechanics."
      },
      {
        "id": "s8",
        "title": "Terms of Service",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/legal/terms-of-service",
        "published": "2025-11-18",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Published contractual terms; last-updated date",
        "supports": "Company-authorized resale, funding requirements, market-data redistribution limitation. Actual enterprise contract may differ."
      },
      {
        "id": "s9",
        "title": "SF Compute raised a $40M Series A",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/sf-compute-series-a",
        "published": "2025-11-26",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company funding announcement",
        "supports": "$40m round, $300m valuation, DCVC and Wing co-leads; not current valuation or total funding."
      },
      {
        "id": "s10",
        "title": "The San Francisco Compute Company",
        "url": "https://www.dcvc.com/companies/the-san-francisco-compute-company/",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Investor portfolio description",
        "supports": "Investor confirms relationship; describes owner-operated marketplace and transaction fees. Interested-party source, not independent audit."
      },
      {
        "id": "s11",
        "title": "Introducing Elastic InfiniBand Partitions",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/elastic-infiniband-partitions",
        "published": "2026-09-25",
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Product release announcement",
        "supports": "Public-preview isolated RDMA partitions for physically colocated instances; feature availability is conditional."
      },
      {
        "id": "s12",
        "title": "GPU clusters / Specs",
        "url": "https://sfcompute.com/specs",
        "published": null,
        "accessed": "2026-11-03",
        "type": "Company product page",
        "supports": "VMs, bare metal, managed Slurm and support. FAQ still contains a Q3 2026 future-tense InfiniBand statement."
      }
    ]
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "s1",
      "title": "About San Francisco Compute",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/about",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company description",
      "supports": "Cluster operation and partner-owned infrastructure model."
    },
    {
      "id": "s2",
      "title": "Build your cluster",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/clusters-to-spec",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company product page",
      "supports": "Customers own hardware and residual value; SFC designs, builds, operates, and offers routes to market."
    },
    {
      "id": "s3",
      "title": "San Francisco Compute sells $245M worth of compute",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/tcv-q3-2026",
      "published": "2026-09-10",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company announcement",
      "supports": "Two 36-month B300 agreements, unnamed customer, announced delivery timing. Not independent contract verification."
    },
    {
      "id": "s4",
      "title": "Standard Intelligence and Roboflow access larger GPU clusters through SF Compute’s resale market",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/scaling-with-gpu-resale",
      "published": "2026-09-28",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company case study with named customer quotations",
      "supports": "Reseller and short-term buyer examples; provider share of resale fees. Vendor-hosted evidence, not audited customer usage."
    },
    {
      "id": "s5",
      "title": "The average customer now saves 25% with SFC",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/realized-discount",
      "published": "2026-09-09",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company performance claim and illustrative guide",
      "supports": "25% average claimed realized discount; its example uses purchased GPU-hours. Does not establish a future guaranteed result."
    },
    {
      "id": "s6",
      "title": "Sell unused compute time",
      "url": "https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/guides/reselling",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Product documentation",
      "supports": "Variable fixed-per-node-hour and percentage fees; proceeds as credits; no buyer guarantee; workload consequences."
    },
    {
      "id": "s7",
      "title": "Orders",
      "url": "https://docs.sfcompute.com/preview/orders",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Product documentation",
      "supports": "SKU-specific orders; eight-GPU nodes; no buy-order fees; partial fills and termination mechanics."
    },
    {
      "id": "s8",
      "title": "Terms of Service",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/legal/terms-of-service",
      "published": "2025-11-18",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Published contractual terms; last-updated date",
      "supports": "Company-authorized resale, funding requirements, market-data redistribution limitation. Actual enterprise contract may differ."
    },
    {
      "id": "s9",
      "title": "SF Compute raised a $40M Series A",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/sf-compute-series-a",
      "published": "2025-11-26",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company funding announcement",
      "supports": "$40m round, $300m valuation, DCVC and Wing co-leads; not current valuation or total funding."
    },
    {
      "id": "s10",
      "title": "The San Francisco Compute Company",
      "url": "https://www.dcvc.com/companies/the-san-francisco-compute-company/",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Investor portfolio description",
      "supports": "Investor confirms relationship; describes owner-operated marketplace and transaction fees. Interested-party source, not independent audit."
    },
    {
      "id": "s11",
      "title": "Introducing Elastic InfiniBand Partitions",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/news/elastic-infiniband-partitions",
      "published": "2026-09-25",
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Product release announcement",
      "supports": "Public-preview isolated RDMA partitions for physically colocated instances; feature availability is conditional."
    },
    {
      "id": "s12",
      "title": "GPU clusters / Specs",
      "url": "https://sfcompute.com/specs",
      "published": null,
      "accessed": "2026-11-03",
      "type": "Company product page",
      "supports": "VMs, bare metal, managed Slurm and support. FAQ still contains a Q3 2026 future-tense InfiniBand statement."
    }
  ],
  "public_projection": {
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "date": "2026-11-10",
    "changes": [
      "Internal workspace artifact paths omitted where present. Historical license/status fields retain original provenance; current public reuse policy is stated separately."
    ],
    "rights": "PCT reserves rights in original editorial content; third-party rights retained. No general source-data reuse license."
  }
}