Simple Agreement for Future Compute

A simple way to finance and allocate future compute.

Compute has quietly become one of the most important inputs in the modern world. It underpins artificial intelligence, scientific research, finance, logistics, media, education, and increasingly, national infrastructure. We still talk about it casually, as “cloud” or “instances,” but underneath that language is something very real: data centers, power systems, cooling, networking, and highly specialized hardware.

For a long time, the dominant assumption was that compute would always be available. If you needed more, you spun it up. If demand increased, supply would catch up. That assumption is breaking down in the places that matter most. High-performance GPUs and AI-ready data center capacity are constrained by physical limits, supply chains, power availability, construction timelines, and geopolitics. When compute becomes scarce, access matters just as much as price.

As soon as access matters, the way compute is financed and allocated starts to matter too.

Compute Reality

Most compute today is sold in one of two ways. Either it is fully on-demand, where availability is assumed until it suddenly isn’t, or it is negotiated through bespoke enterprise agreements that take time, lawyers, and repeated reinvention. Both approaches worked when compute felt abundant. Neither works particularly well when compute becomes strategic infrastructure.

Other infrastructure sectors solved this problem long ago. Power plants are built because someone commits to buying power in the future. Factories are financed because future production is pre-sold. Aircraft are ordered years in advance because airlines make binding commitments before the planes exist. These agreements turn future demand into something that can be financed today.

Compute is now firmly in that category, but the contract structures around it have not yet caught up.

Infrastructure Logic

A Simple Agreement for Future Compute, or SAFC, is an attempt to close that gap with a minimal, legible contract primitive.

At its core, a SAFC is straightforward. One party commits to future access to compute. That commitment helps finance the infrastructure required to deliver it. In return, the party receives defined compute access over time, on terms that are agreed in advance.

The simplicity is intentional. The goal is not to invent a new financial trick, but to reduce friction between people who need compute and the reality of building physical infrastructure.

A SAFC is designed to make future demand concrete enough that capacity can be planned, financed, and delivered without turning every deal into a bespoke negotiation.

Intended Use

The first group a SAFC is designed for are teams and institutions that genuinely need compute to operate. These include product teams deploying models, researchers training systems, enterprises integrating AI into core workflows, universities running large experiments, and governments operating sensitive or sovereign workloads. For them, the value is operational. Predictable access matters. Planning matters. Fewer surprises matter in practice. A SAFC gives them a way to secure future capacity while still being able to start integrating today.

The second group are organizations that treat compute as a strategic resource. These groups may have multiple internal projects, labs, or portfolio companies whose needs shift over time. For them, a SAFC functions as an allocation right. It allows compute to be directed to wherever it is most valuable at a given moment. This is not equity and it is not a promise of financial return. It is a way to reserve access to a scarce input and maintain flexibility over how it is used.

Time Alignment

One practical reality matters here. Infrastructure takes time to build, but teams cannot wait to begin integration.

A SAFC is designed to handle this by allowing immediate usage through existing compute infrastructure while longer-term capacity is developed. Teams can integrate APIs, test workloads, validate performance, and build operational habits right away. As new capacity comes online, delivery transitions into the longer-term structure defined by the agreement. The contract provides continuity across that transition instead of forcing a reset.

This bridge between present access and future capacity is central to the idea. It acknowledges how systems are actually built and adopted.

Scope Limits

A SAFC is not a token, not a speculative vehicle, and not a promise about future prices. Compute markets evolve over time. Hardware improves, supply expands, and prices can move in different directions depending on conditions. A SAFC does not eliminate uncertainty. It is simply a way to make the terms of participation clearer in advance.

The goal is not to emphasize upside, but to reduce ambiguity. Clear definitions, shared expectations around delivery, and well-understood remedies tend to matter more, in practice, than complex or overly clever structures.

Open Standard

This idea is being shared as research because markets tend to scale more smoothly when they have common primitives. In the absence of shared structures, similar agreements are often reinvented repeatedly, adding friction and slowing progress. Publishing a Simple Agreement for Future Compute is meant to offer a reference point that others can read, question, and adapt.

This post is only an introduction. The more detailed structure, definitions, and design considerations are laid out in the accompanying white paper.

If the idea proves useful, it will evolve through practical application. If not, it remains a documented attempt to describe and clarify a problem that is likely to become more significant over time.

You can read the SAFC white paper below.