GPU lender pivots to inference chips in $400M deal

The $400 million（約640億円） loan to General Compute represents a deliberate pivot by Upper90 away from GPU financing toward inference-specific hardware. Upper90's CEO Billy Libby, a former Goldman Sachs quantitative trader, previously pioneered chip-backed lending in 2021 when he financed GPU purchases for Crusoe Energy—a deal that faced skepticism from traditional lenders worried about GPU depreciation and market uncertainty. That strategy proved prescient: CoreWeave later built a business model around chip-backed loans and achieved a blockbuster IPO, normalizing this form of financing across the industry.

Now that GPU markets are mature and potentially oversupplied, Upper90 is positioning itself ahead of the next wave by backing companies focused on inference at a time when the open-source AI model ecosystem is growing stronger. Companies like OpenRouter and Fireworks are raising at significant valuations, and new models like Kimi's K3 are demonstrating competitive performance against releases from Anthropic and OpenAI. General Compute's bet on SambaNova silicon—rather than Nvidia—matters because it sidesteps dependence on a single dominant supplier. Competitors like TensorWave are making similar moves with AMD partnerships, suggesting a broader fragmentation of Nvidia's market position as customers seek cost-efficient alternatives.