Merchant
Silicon sold on the open market to any buyer — NVIDIA/AMD GPUs, Broadcom and Marvell switch and design-service silicon — versus captive chips built for one owner's internal fleet.
Context: Parts 1.3, 7, 8, 16.2
In other contexts, Merchant also means Revenue or power sold on the open market without a long-term contract, carrying price risk versus contracted supply. (Parts 1.8, 2, 3, 10, 15, 16.4, 16.5).
Current numbers
~30–40%+cost-per-token / price-performance advantage cited by custom-silicon programs vs merchant GPU
~27.8%custom ASIC share of AI-server shipments in 2026; growing ~44.6% YoY (≈3x merchant-GPU growth)
1.20–2.00xminimum DSCR band — ~1.20–1.45x contracted vs ~1.75–2.00x merchant