SF Compute has secured $40 million in a Series A equity financing round for the expansion of its AI compute marketplace.

The San Francisco-based startup was valued at $300 million in the funding round, reports the Wall Street Journal.

SF Compute's marketplace enables buyers of GPU capacity to resell their unused capacity. The company says this can help combat the risk of overbuilding data center capacity and help customers that are looking to access GPUs on a flexible basis to avoid getting trapped in long-term contracts.

The funding round was led by DCVC and Wing Venture Capital. It also saw participation from existing backers, including Electric Capital and Alt Capital.

In a LinkedIn post Ali Tamaseb, general partner at DCVC, said "SF Compute is building a true marketplace for compute – allowing companies to buy GPU/compute capacity on flexible, short-term contracts while enabling data centers and enterprises to sell excess capacity. This unlocks liquidity, efficiency, and price discovery in a market that has historically been rigid and hard to access."

"We are psyched to be partnering with Evan Conrad, Ethan W. Anderson. Eric Menees, Eric Park, and the rest of the team, and to be co-leading this round with Peter Wagner at Wing Venture Capital."

While SF does not own any of the GPUs it provides access to, the startup says it manages more than $100 million in hardware.

Founded in 2023, the company recently hired Eric Park, former CEO of AI cloud provider Voltage Park, as CTO. It has also hired executives from Sun Microsystems and Lambda. In total, the company now employs around 30 people.

The platform currently lists pricing information for the Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs, though the website has a notice suggesting it will soon be offering access to B300s.