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Does anyone know anything about buying a financialized version of compute, like one would buy shares in a company? I don't mean buying a token that gives you a claim on some given amount of server time but buying something that means you get the net profit from a certain set of physical processors, without actually buying the chips and getting them delivered to you.
I know you can rent compute for a given task, it's all in some great big server somewhere. But can you buy it? Say you thought that there was going to be even more of an AI boom, could you buy some compute and then rent it out, making a profit and selling it onto someone else? Could you short compute if you thought it was all overhyped?
I suppose compute is not like houses in that it gets obsolete fairly quickly, that might complicate investment. I know people don't usually buy shares in trucks or a C&C machine, they buy shares in companies.
I have no idea if these exist, but if there's a company whose sole business model is buying/managing large servers and renting out the compute, then buying shares in that company is nearly equivalent to what you're looking for. The same could be done for other physical goods like trucks and C&C machines. As long as the company specializes heavily in a single type of thing and doesn't diversify, then its shares should have approximately the same value as that thing.
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