Touchmark: Market for future inference capacity

TL;DR: We are building a market for future inference capacity. You buy tokens for a model over a time window from the provider of your choice at a price fixed today (up to 30% off - or more for larger orders via direct quotes). If your plans change, you will be able to resell your reserved capacity to another buyer.

https://youtu.be/nMaDr46NU5I

Problem

Token spend is growing and it’s growing fast. Out of 100+ companies we spoke to, most are trying to cut their inference costs.

Reserved capacity guarantee deals provide discounts + certainty, but are negotiated bilaterally, take time, and are hard to switch from - as a buyer you commit by prepayment, which you lose if you switch to a different provider, or in some cases even a different model.

What if a buyer could:

1. See all possible discounted capacity deals in one place
2. Buy with a click of a button
3. Have an option to resell to another buyer with another click of a button

But why would model providers (sellers) want this?

In short:

1. Model providers’ goal is to maximise GPU utilization - the more information they have about future demand, the better they can allocate capacity.
2. Selling future capacity is an excellent way to finance GPU compute - dilution-free and interest-free
3. Extra distribution channel for enterprise buyers

What if a new model comes out but I already bought capacity for the older one?

Contracts for “Best model in class” allow you to buy frontier model capacity in advance. And even if you're holding a contract on an older model when a new generation ships - far from every application needs the frontier, so you can list your capacity for resale.

What if I am a very large buyer and these discounts are not enough?

We are launching Requests for Quotes (RFQs) - as a buyer you can create a request for capacity you need and let providers bid to offer you the best price.

Team

Ilia: Maths & Finance @ Imperial, Product (Wealth & Trading) @ Revolut

Roman: CS + Math @ NUS, IOI gold, 2x Quant Research @ Citadel Securities, AI engineer @ Lovable

If you're a company buying tokens or a model provider, email us at contact@touchmark.ai or sign up at https://app.touchmark.ai/signup

Capacity transactions on Touchmark are limited to commercial producers and commercial end users in the wholesale capacity market. Sellers offer capacity to Buyers that purchase it to consume or use in connection with the Buyers' commercial operations. Some contracts are available only in the primary markets.