Tech Bros Are Trading GPUs. We Brought Snacks (Oct '26)
Note from the Founders 👋
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Trading Compute Like Oil 🛢️
Deal Spotlight: Big Night 🥂
Investor Resource: Whole Life Insurance as a Strategic Asset with Katie Koch ✏️
Media & Press: Pull Up a Chair 🎙️
What's Coming Up: The Q4 Financial Lock-In & Cohort 5 🔐
Closing Note 💌
Note from the Founders 👋
GM ☕ from Serena, Porter, and Emma! October is here, which means Serena has started her annual Gilmore Girls rewatch, and we’re somehow already gearing up for the holidays (how early is too early to put up Christmas decorations? Asking for a friend). At Girl Math, we’ve been booked and busy this fall, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Between all the events, new faces, and exciting things happening across GMC, we've been feeling extra lucky to call this our job. And while it's not quite Thanksgiving yet, we're getting a head start on the gratitude. THANK YOU for making this community what it is!
A few highlights from the past month:
Our Luma calendar has been packed. In NYC, we had our first Cohort 4 happy hour, got hands-on with AI at our AI Breakfast with Town, talked all things CPG at our Industry Night with Myca & Pop Up Grocer, and took a breather doing puppy yoga at Puppy Sphere (more puppy cuddles than yoga, but that’s fine by us). Outside of NYC, our city leads have stayed busy putting on a happy hour in Philly, SF Tech Week events, and LA and Chicago get-togethers. Being a virtual first community, we always love these opportunities to get the girls together IRL.
We went back to school. We had the pleasure of speaking at the Kogod School of Business at American University, the University of Florida’s Women on Wall Street, and St. John’s University’s Tobin College of Business. The discussions and the caliber of the questions from students made us pumped for their generation to join GMC in a few short years.
Female founder events are our favs. We teamed up with Sam Cutler of MINDFULL, a women’s health and nutrition platform, to share her journey building MINDFULL and the importance of angel investing in women’s health. We also got a sneak peek at her first functional baking mix (spoiler alert - it’s delicious). Interested in learning more? Feel free to reply to this email. We also headed to AngelFest to support Kelley Arena, Annie Evans, and the HALO community at their debut event. Being in a room with hundreds of women building and investing in amazing companies? Best Wednesday ever!
One last thank you to everyone who showed up to an event this month! Now enough about us. We have markets to discuss. Happy reading! 💸
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Trading Compute Like Oil 🛢️
Read time: ~6 minutes
If you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, you’ve undoubtedly seen the insane AI headlines over the past several weeks. An OpenAI employee was arrested for allegedly planting a listening device in the company's office; researchers are sounding the alarm about AI security risks; and the debate over whether AI will save humanity or destroy it is showing no signs of slowing down.
However, if you have any tech or finance bros in your life, you might be hearing about another story in the world of AI and finance: the computing power that makes AI possible is becoming a tradable commodity.
And you best believe that if the bros are talking about it, we will be too.
First, a quick refresher: What is a commodity?
Commodities are basic goods and resources that can be bought and sold, like oil, gold, wheat, or electricity. Unlike stocks, which represent ownership in a company, commodities are valued primarily for their utility and the supply and demand for them.
One of the defining characteristics of a commodity is that units of the same grade are largely interchangeable. A barrel of a particular grade of crude oil is worth roughly the same whether you're buying it from one producer or another, adjusting for things like location and transportation costs.
And because commodity prices fluctuate, entire financial markets have developed around trading them. Investors can buy and sell contracts tied to their future prices, while businesses can use those same contracts to protect themselves against unexpected price swings.
Which brings us to the newest contender for commodity status: AI compute.
So, what exactly is AI compute?
Every time you ask Claude a question, generate an AI image, or have your Townie summarize your inbox, you're using computing power, or compute for short.
AI compute is essentially the processing capacity needed to train and run AI models. Much of that work happens on specialized chips called GPUs (graphics processing units). Companies like NVIDIA make the chips, data centers house them, and AI companies use their processing power.
Importantly, you don't have to own a GPU to use one. Companies can rent computing capacity, often paying by the GPU-hour. And just like any other resource, prices fluctuate based on supply and demand.
Sound familiar? We have buyers, sellers, and a resource with a fluctuating price - all the makings of a commodity market.
Why would anyone want to trade computing power?
Let's say you're an AI startup that needs thousands of GPUs to train a new model. You sign a year-long contract to secure that capacity, but halfway through, you realize you don't need all of it. You're now paying for expensive GPUs that are sitting unused.
On the flip side, imagine you're a data center operator. You've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on GPUs, but rental prices fluctuate, and newer chips could make your existing hardware less valuable.
Enter compute trading.
Companies are beginning to trade both actual GPU rental capacity and financial contracts tied to its price. Much like airlines use oil futures to hedge fuel costs, AI companies could use compute futures to protect themselves against rising GPU rental rates.
We’re already seeing this play out. SF Compute lets companies resell unused GPU capacity, while CME Group and Silicon Data have developed futures contracts tied to NVIDIA GPU rental prices.
So who's actually trading compute, and can I?
There are a few different players getting involved.
AI companies and data centers are the most obvious participants. Companies that need computing power can buy capacity, while those with excess can sell it. Marketplaces like SF Compute are making these transactions easier.
Financial institutions and professional traders are another group to watch. With futures contracts tied to GPU rental prices, traders can potentially profit from price movements without ever touching an actual GPU. Think commodity trading, but instead of barrels of oil, the underlying reference is the hourly cost of renting NVIDIA chips.
And individual investors? Technically, individuals can trade certain commodity futures through futures-enabled brokerage accounts. CME's new compute contracts are exchange-listed products, so individual access depends on whether a broker supports them, account approval, and market liquidity. They're not something you can assume is available in your everyday brokerage account, and these contracts can carry substantial leverage and risk.
There's also no established, widely available retail ETF that gives investors direct exposure to compute rental prices.
So while you probably won't be adding GPU futures to your portfolio alongside your S&P 500 ETF anytime soon, there are other ways to get exposure to the growth of this market.
Great, but what does this have to do with alternative investing?
Fair question. Futures trade on public exchanges, while we at GMC focus on private markets. What's interesting to us, though, is everything being built around this emerging market.
For venture investors, there's a new category of startups building marketplaces, pricing benchmarks, trading infrastructure, and software that helps companies manage their computing needs. SF Compute and Silicon Data are two examples of companies operating in this space.
For private equity and infrastructure investors, there's the physical infrastructure behind it all. Data centers require enormous investments in land, power, cooling systems, and hardware, creating opportunities for investors financing and operating those assets.
For private credit investors, there's an emerging market for loans backed by GPUs and data center contracts. Companies like CoreWeave have used substantial debt financing to expand their AI infrastructure, although rapidly depreciating hardware and volatile rental rates create real risks for lenders.
The catch: follow the money 👀
Before you go all in on compute, there are three things to know:
The money moves in circles. Chipmakers and cloud providers invest billions in AI companies, which then spend it on those same providers’ chips and cloud. NVIDIA invests in OpenAI, and OpenAI buys NVIDIA chips. Critics say this makes demand look bigger than it really is.
There’s a real shortage, for now. Top GPUs have waitlists of up to a year, and experts don’t expect supply to catch up until 2027 or 2028. That’s great for whoever owns the chips today. It’s riskier once supply catches up and prices drop.
Power is the bottleneck. Raising money is the easy part. Data centers can wait years to connect to the grid, so the scarce asset may be the power, not the chips.
Why do we care? Before you back a compute marketplace, a data center or a GPU-backed loan, ask who the end customer is and where their money comes from. Demand paid for with real revenue is very different from demand paid for with the supplier’s own money. In girl math terms: it’s not a sale if you gave them the cash to buy it.
As compute becomes easier to price, trade, and finance, it could create opportunities across multiple alternative asset classes.
Everyone wants to invest in the next big AI company, but there's an entire financial ecosystem being built around the computing power those companies need to operate. So next time you hear tech bros (or Girl Math girls!) talking about their OpenAI secondaries, ask them for their take on the compute market. 🤖
Deal Spotlight: Big Night 🥂
ICYMI: Each month, we'll share a few of the deals our community has backed, not to give investment advice, but to show you the breadth of opportunities Girl Math members are exploring and spotlight some epic founders.
Step inside any Big Night and you’re met with bright, bold colors, whimsical illustrations, and shelves begging to be browsed. You walk in hunting for the perfect gift for a friend (or a little something for yourself) and walk out inspired.
Big Night’s story starts in peak COVID, when celebrating birthdays over Zoom was the best any of us could do. Katherine Lewin had a hunch that when we could gather together in person again, we’d do it stronger than ever.
She decided to open a dinner party shop to meet that moment. The original store was just 240 square feet, packed to the brim with unique brands, vintage treasures, and savory snacks that she felt the home goods stores of our parents' generation lacked. People kept coming back, again and again, bringing friends and buying gifts for everyone they knew.
Five years later, Big Night has three locations across NYC (Greenpoint, the West Village, and the Upper East Side), and, most impressive of all, got there completely bootstrapped.
What makes it compelling is how rare it is: in a home goods market full of bland, mass-produced products, Big Night has a real point of view. Katherine has proved that people will continue to pay for things that feel personal, playful, celebratory, and worth gifting. And in a year where every pitch deck works in something about AI, Katherine will tell you straight up: this is NOT an AI company. It’s a business built on the beauty of in-person connection, and that’s why we love it so much.
Girl Math Capital investors were drawn to Katherine’s grit, Big Night’s brand identity, and the traction that already spoke volumes. Caroline Danehy, Girl Math Capital member and founder of coastal apparel brand Fair Harbor, put it best:
“Katherine has created a brand with a distinct point of view and a thoughtfully curated product assortment that makes the everyday feel personal and fun. What excites me as an investor is the traction Big Night has already achieved and the opportunity to build a household name around that distinct identity. I know Katherine and the team are just getting started.”
Any night can be a Big Night. Shop in person or online at bignightbk.com and follow along at @bignightshop 🥂
GMC investors at Big Night’s West Village store.
Big Night’s founder Katherine Lewin with Emma, Serena, and Porter from GMC.
Investor Resource: Whole Life Insurance as a Strategic Asset with Katie Koch ✏️
Wait, life insurance? In an alternatives newsletter? Hear us out. At our October Round Table, Katie Koch of Prosperian Wealth Management made the case for whole life insurance, and it’s a lot more interesting and complex than the “buy it once you have kids” story you might have been told.
Whole life insurance is a type of permanent life insurance that provides lifelong coverage and includes a built-in savings component called cash value. Unlike term insurance, which covers you for a set period, whole life can sit on your balance sheet as an asset. Katie’s framing was that it can be a home for the defensive part of your portfolio, not a replacement for growth investments. Think of it as the steady friend in the group chat who doesn’t panic when the market does.
Here are the four ways Katie sees people using it strategically:
Tax efficiency. A properly structured policy can have tax advantages worth considering alongside your other tax-advantaged accounts.
Permission to spend. Knowing a death benefit is there can give you the confidence to actually use your other assets in retirement, knowing you may still leave money behind.
Predictable growth. Whole life has contractually guaranteed cash value accumulation (backed by the insurer), so it’s a way to keep part of your money out of market swings.
Liquidity and leverage. You can borrow against the cash value to fund things like a business investment or a rental property, while the cash value stays in the policy. (The catch worth knowing: loans accrue interest and can reduce cash values and death benefits.)
Who it might be for: Katie pointed to people with stable income who are already investing consistently and want a defensive slice of the pie. Her own rule of thumb is to start the conversation with clients once they’re saving about $50,000 a year across accounts like a 401(k), brokerage, and HSA. At that level, she suggested considering $5,000-$10,000 toward whole life, not going all in. Her cap is generally no more than 20% of savings.
Who it might NOT be for: Katie cautioned against it for people carrying high-interest debt, without an emergency fund, or whose premiums would cause financial stress. And to be clear: whole life isn’t meant to beat equities. Whether it makes sense depends on your situation and how the policy is structured.
As always, this is for educational purposes only, and should not be taken as investment advice. Please speak to a licensed professional before making any decisions.
Media & Press: Pull Up a Chair 🎙️
Dinner parties have been a theme for us this month. Porter pulled up a chair at Five Seats, the dinner-party-style interview series from By Maven Media, for a conversation with host Dr. Kelsy Vick about investing beyond the stock market. It starts with a story that might resonate with you: Porter kept seeing “angel investor” in the bios of women she admired, got curious, and went down the rabbit hole that eventually became Girl Math Capital. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧
Melanie Masarin, founder of Ghia, a Girl Math portfolio company, gave us a shoutout in her Substack, where she writes about why a small check can be a way to prioritize the people you believe in, and why women deserve better access to deal flow. We’re proud to be Ghia investors 🤍 and now we’re asking all of you to subscribe to her Substack. You need her taste and her tips.
What's Coming Up: The Q4 Financial Lock-In & Cohort 5 🔐
Why wait until New Year’s resolutions to check in on your investment portfolio? We’re getting a head start with the Q4 Financial Lock-In on Thursday, November 12, an evening dedicated to making sense of public and private market news and what it means for your money. You’ll also meet Girl Math Capital’s newest partner, Jordan Ricciardi of Katz Wealth Management at UBS, who oversees the team’s women’s segment and works with women and next-gen clients on financial planning, investment analysis, and portfolio building. Open to Girl Math members and friends. RSVP here!
One of the best ways to lock in is with accountability in community. 👀 Cohort 5 applications open in November for a January start. If you’ve been hearing the words “alternative investing” everywhere but aren’t sure where to begin, you’re in the right place.
A GMC Cohort is a four-month educational bootcamp with live sessions every other Monday night, where you learn how to evaluate startups, real estate, and crypto from experienced investors. You’ll also join a community of women who are asking the same questions you are, get access to shared deal flow so you can put what you learn to work, and meet other women at community events. No prior experience needed. Just curiosity, and maybe a group chat of friends you’re about to convince to join with you. Fill out our interest form here to be the first to know when applications open.
Lastly, follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok so you don't miss a thing.
Closing Note 💌
Girl Math Capital was born from the frustration that deals were shared in some circles and not in others. This newsletter is one more way to make sure those conversations and opportunities reach more people, and in particular, more women. If you know someone who'd love this newsletter, pass it along. We believe alternative investing isn't just for finance and tech bros - it's for women who want to get smart, build community, and create generational wealth. See you next month 💸💅
The Girl Math Team
If this got you curious, submit your information to join our next cohort, or apply to be a community member here.
