The screenshot there is 1xH100 PCIE, for $1.604. Which is likely promotional pricing to get customers onboarded.

With promotional pricing it can be $0 for qualified customers.

Note also, how the author shows screenshots for invites for private alpha access. It can be mutually beneficial for the data center to provide discounted alpha testing access. The developer gets discounted access, the data center gets free/realistic alpha testing workflows.

The PCIE has much lower perf than even a 1x slice of an SXM

I really suggest shopping around. <$2 SXM is a real thing, if your patient enough on the schedule.

When I did the screenshot a month ago, it wasn't public info yet.

Now its public: SFCompute list it on their main page - https://sfcompute.com/

And they are *not* the only one

Okay, but you can't actually buy it at that price, it's a pure marketing ploy.

Not at $0.5 (which the lower bound in their marketing), but $1.5 is very doable on right times (done so multiple times)

The article says $2. Which is quite consistent for a small cluster

The average consumer cannot. Only those who have access to sfcompute's private beta can access those prices. Once it opens up to the public, the price will increase.

Running preprocessing jobs on a $0.5 SFCompute H100 node RN (though price usually bounces up to what you mentioned).

So are you thinking that the lower price is to get the customer in the door and then when they need the Infiniband connected GPUs to charge them more?

original title i wrote for this piece was "$1 H100s" but i deleted because even i thought it was so ridiculously low lol

but yes sfcompute home page is now quoting $0.95/hr average. wild.

sfcompute is a scam. You can't buy GPUs at that price. They're running a "private beta" where people can bid for a spot GPU, but they let a limited number of people into the beta, so the prices are artificially low.

I actually signed up for separate new account, to double check that my business account was not being favored or rigged in "private beta"

Its really not that hard to validate this claim, you can just rent for 4 hours at $1.50 - which is under $50

Also like I said, they are *not* the only one, shop around

I signed up and don't have access currently. My point that the prices are low because demand is limited because of lack of users still stands. Once people sign up and hear about it, the price will increase substantially.

We are actively using sfcompute at the moment. It's a great product for us where we have a backlog of R&D workloads that can be incrementally run in short bursts.

I think you're right about the small private beta resulting in relatively low demand. But it's also a different value prop. If you need a large cluster for a reasonable period of time, you're not paying $1/hr. But if you can use the remnants of someone who contracted for a large allocation, but doesn't need part of it, they can offer it into the market and recoup what would otherwise just be wasted hours.

Currently they have some issues around stability, and spin up times are longer than ideal (ca. 15 min), but the team is super responsive and all of these are likely to be resolved in the near future. (No affiliation, just happy users rooting for the sfcompute team).

They might be and thanks for warning about that one company - but if this is anything like renting 3090s (ignoring the period of time during crypto rises), the prices really can go low to a loss level, I guess sunk cost crisis for the owners or the inertia of not pulling them out and selling them hits hard.

As an advisor to those guys, I take a great deal of objection with you calling it a scam. It's not a scam. They're testing things out, so the price is low and not many people can use it... because they're testing. That isn't a scam.

They are advertising a ridiculously low price for their GPUs that can't be rented.

If a store advertised $0.50 burgers, but when you visit, they say they're not for sale, wouldn't you consider that a scam?

Hi! I run sfcompute.

We don't have a limited number of slots!

We just go down a lot. It's VERY beta at the moment; we literally take the whole thing down about once a week. So if we know of some major problem, or we're down, we just don't let people on (since they'll have a bad experience).

You're right though that the prices are probably lower because of this. That's why we have a thing on our website that says "*Prices are from the sfcompute private beta and don’t represent normal market conditions."

If you'd like on anyway, I can let you on, just email me at evan at sfcompute, but it may literally break!

If I may recommend: put a note where people will see those prices so that they understand those prices are unlikely to remain. If the outcome of your current UX is people thinking you're a scam, you have a problem that will last as you start to scale. It's hard to measure now, but it's harder to fix later.

Also, I'm really impressed at how great your replies about your product are! You're a gem.

> put a note where people will see those prices so that they understand those prices are unlikely to remain.

Yup, shall do!

> Also, I'm really impressed at how great your replies about your product are! You're a gem.

Thank you! :D