Why Compute Prices Are Still Rising | Steve Hou of Silicon Data on GPU Rental Indices, Fed Meeting, and Anthropic S-1 (LIVE)

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Steve Hou of Silicon Data joins Monetary Matters on the day the Fed held rates with two hawkish dissents, Alphabet and Microsoft reported earnings, and two days after Anthropic’s S-1 filing.

Silicon Data publishes the GPU rental indices behind CME’s planned compute futures. We discuss why renting an Nvidia H100 costs about 45% more than it did in December, why transaction prices and asking prices have diverged, and whether the forward curve says GPU rents keep rising. We also cover the “crunch spread” between rising GPU costs and falling token prices, what Anthropic’s S-1 reveals about the economics of frontier AI labs, what [Alphabet’s and Microsoft’s capex guidance] means for future compute supply, and how higher interest rates feed into the cost of AI infrastructure.

Topics:

The 2026 GPU price spike, and why older chips got more expensive Silicon Data vs. Ornn: asking prices vs. transacted prices Compute futures: the CME delay, contango vs. backwardation, and who hedges Token pricing and the crunch spread Anthropic’s S-1: contracted compute vs. spot prices Alphabet and Microsoft capex, and what it means for GPU supply The Fed’s hawkish hold, and rates as a cost of compute

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