Compute for Equity

Aurora Robotics keeps four months of runway

How a Series-A robotics company funded a six-month H200 training run with a Compute-SAFE instead of cash.

Illustrative — based on design-partner conversations

The problem

Aurora's largest line item was a six-month, eight-GPU H200 training run — about $158k in cash it would have raised dilutively just to hand to a cloud. Paying for compute in cash meant raising earlier and diluting sooner, with all the GPU price and uptime risk sitting on the startup.

What CFE did

A partner datacenter invested the compute as a $1M Compute-SAFE ($25M cap, 20% discount, six-month draw), priced by the Oracle. Aurora drew compute as it trained; an SLA clause rolled forward any month below 95% uptime at no extra dilution. Nothing converts until Aurora's next priced round.

We turned the single scariest line item in our budget into deferred, capped equity — and kept the cash for engineers.Illustrative — composite founder, Series A robotics