Ex-Citadel quant’s Hyperbolic builds a GPU marketplace to hedge AI demand risk

CoreWeave shares are sinking, and they are taking a good chunk of the AI trade down with them. That leaves investors with an awkward question: how do you protect yourself if the AI compute boom cools off? Jasper Zhang thinks he has an answer. Zhang, a former quantitative researcher at Citadel Securities, now runs Hyperbolic, a startup building a GPU marketplace designed to help investors hedge against a drop in AI demand. A marketplace for the chips everyone wants Hyperbolic is an AI cloud and GPU marketplace based in San Francisco. Zhang co-founded it with Yuchen Jin. The basic model works like an Airbnb for graphics processors. Data centers sitting on GPUs they aren’t fully using can list that spare capacity on Hyperbolic. Developers who need compute can rent it, either on demand or through reserved arrangements. Pricing is refreshed every week. As of October 2026, on-demand rentals of an H100 SXM started at about $3.19 per GPU-hour, according to the research findings. The company says its prices run up to 50-75% below what traditional providers charge. The platform serves between 200,000 to 250,000 engineers and developers hunting for GPU supply. The growth curve is steep. Hyper...