Research · Glossary

The vocabulary

Plain-English definitions for every term used across Compute for Equity — the instrument, the regulator, the market and the players.

35 terms

Compute-SAFE: A Simple Agreement for Future Equity whose consideration is metered compute rather than cash. A provider commits a capped amount of compute, drawn over a window, that converts to equity at the company's next priced round — subject to a valuation cap, a discount, and an SLA-suspension clause. It behaves economically like a SAFE and is treated legally as a security.
MWh megawatt-hour: A unit of energy equal to one megawatt of power sustained for one hour. It is the upstream input that powers compute — the cheapest leg of the energy→compute→equity triangle, and the one the Gulf has in abundance.
GPU·h GPU-hour: One GPU running for one hour — the standard unit of compute supply. A six-month training run on eight H200s, for example, is 8 × 24 × ~182.5 ≈ 35,040 GPU·h. The Oracle prices compute deals in GPU·h.
ADGM Abu Dhabi Global Market: An international financial centre in Abu Dhabi that applies English common law directly and has its own courts and regulator. Its mature digital-securities regime is the reason Compute for Equity is built there first.
FSRA Financial Services Regulatory Authority: The independent regulator of the ADGM. It treats any digital token with the characteristics of a security as a Digital Security under the FSMR, and licenses the activities — market operation, dealing, custody — that a clearing venue performs.
RegLab: The FSRA's regulatory sandbox. It grants a restricted permission so an early company can test a real product with limited participants under tailored conditions and direct supervision — the designed on-ramp for Compute for Equity's Phase 1 deals.
Oracle: Our cross-asset pricing engine. It ingests GPU rental indices, energy prices, depreciation and utilization curves, and valuation inputs to quote a fair, auditable value for a compute+energy contribution and the equity it converts to. Because we own no compute, the quote is neutral.
Clearing: Matching, pricing and finalizing a trade so that each side's obligation is guaranteed and settled by a neutral party. Clearing is what turns a pile of bilateral deals into a market with a trustable price.
Custody: The safekeeping of client assets — credits and Compute-SAFEs — in segregated, bankruptcy-remote vehicles so that one participant's failure never touches another's position. Regulated custody is what allows institutional and sovereign capital to participate at all.
Settlement: The final, irreversible transfer that completes a cleared trade — compute delivered, equity (or a Compute-SAFE) issued, ledgers reconciled. Settlement is the moment an obligation becomes a position.
VATP042: A UAE Federal Tax Authority public clarification on barter transactions: each leg of an in-kind exchange is valued at open-market value and carries reciprocal 5% VAT, which nets to approximately nil. It is part of what makes a compute-for-equity barter clean to settle.
DePIN Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network: A network that tokenizes real-world physical infrastructure — GPUs, energy, storage — so capacity can be coordinated and traded on-chain. The directory tracks 1,000 such compute/AI token networks.
Compute Futures: Exchange-traded contracts that let parties lock in a future price for compute. In 2026 CME and Silicon Data launched futures on a GPU rental index; ICE and Ornn followed. Futures let the market price compute against cash — Compute for Equity adds the missing leg: pricing it against equity.
GMV gross merchandise value: Total cleared volume flowing through the venue — our north-star metric. Revenue is a thin take rate on GMV, so the business scales with the flow it clears, not with its own balance sheet.
Take Rate: The fee the venue charges on cleared volume. Blended across origination, clearing, custody and secondary trading it lands around 2–4% of primary flow — capital-light revenue that compounds as the book grows.
Treasury Float: The segregated client balances held in custody between deal legs. Under a conservative treasury policy, modest yield on this float is a secondary, recurring revenue line — never a source of risk to client assets.
Origination Fee: The fee charged when a Compute-SAFE is structured and signed — typically 1–2% of the principal. It rewards the dealmaking work of sourcing, pricing and papering a transaction, and is the first revenue a deal produces.
Tokenized Security: A security whose ownership and transfer are represented on a distributed ledger. Tokenization is a settlement and representation layer on top of a compliantly issued security — at CFE, never a device to escape securities characterization.
Professional Client: An FSRA classification for sophisticated and institutional parties. Compute for Equity serves Professional Clients and market counterparties only — never retail — which both matches the real market and dramatically narrows the regulatory surface.
Stargate Cluster: Shorthand for the multi-gigawatt AI compute build-out in Abu Dhabi (referenced as ~5GW). Its scale, beside cheap energy and sovereign capital, is a core reason the supply side of CFE's market is reachable here.
Hub71: Abu Dhabi's global tech ecosystem and startup hub, backed by Mubadala. It connects founders to capital, talent and government across the UAE — the demand-side ecosystem CFE plugs into.
Hub71+ Digital Assets: Hub71's specialist program for digital-asset and Web3 companies, aligned with the ADGM regulatory environment. Its cohorts are a natural on-ramp for a regulated, tokenized clearing venue.
MGX: An Abu Dhabi technology-investment company focused on AI and advanced compute infrastructure. One of the sovereign-linked players building non-dollar AI rails that sit on the demand side of CFE's market.
Mubadala: A sovereign investor of Abu Dhabi with a global, multi-sector portfolio and deep AI-infrastructure exposure. Representative of the patient, energy-rich capital CFE's clearing venue is designed to serve.
G42: An Abu Dhabi-based AI and cloud-computing group operating large compute and data assets. A reference point for the kind of energy-rich, compute-heavy supply-side partner the venue originates against.
ADIA Abu Dhabi Investment Authority: One of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. Emblematic of the institutional capital that can only deploy through regulated venues — which is precisely why CFE's ADGM custody is the product for that buyer.
ICE Intercontinental Exchange: A global operator of exchanges and clearing houses. A useful comparable: ICE financializes commodities and risk through neutral venues — the same shape CFE applies to compute, energy and equity.
CME CME Group: The world's largest derivatives exchange operator. In 2026, with Silicon Data, it launched futures on a GPU rental index — evidence that compute is becoming an institutional, exchange-traded commodity.
Silicon Data: A compute-market data company that, with CME, built the GPU rental index underlying compute futures. Index providers like it supply the price signals the Oracle triangulates against.
Ornn: A compute-markets venue that, with ICE, brought compute futures to market alongside the CME×Silicon Data effort — further proof that pricing compute against cash is now mainstream.
Compute Treasury: A pool of compute capacity a buyer assembles and manages as a strategic asset — for example, to acquire AI companies or fund them with compute instead of cash. CFE lets a buyer hold and deploy a compute treasury through standardized instruments.
Cap valuation cap: The maximum company valuation at which a SAFE or Compute-SAFE converts to equity. The cap protects the holder on the upside: if the next round prices far above it, the instrument still converts at the cap, bounding the founder's dilution.
Discount Rate: The percentage reduction a SAFE holder receives versus the next round's share price (e.g., 20%). The discount governs conversion when the round prices below the cap-adjusted threshold — making a soft round the most expensive outcome for the founder.
SLA Suspension Clause: A protective term in the Compute-SAFE: if average GPU uptime in any month falls below a threshold (e.g., 95%), that month's draw rolls forward at no additional dilution. The company only gives up equity for compute actually delivered to spec, shifting operational risk to the provider.
Bear / Base / Bull scenario: The three modelled outcomes used across the financials and the worked example. They bound a Compute-SAFE's cost by varying the next-round valuation — e.g., dilution of 6.25% (bear), 4.17% (base) and 4.00% (bull) for a $1M instrument at a $25M cap and 20% discount.