Shares of QumulusAI (NASDAQ: QMLS) rose 10.1% in the pre-opening session on Friday. The reason for the change in quotations was the announcement of a profit-sharing agreement with an agency hedge fund. This transaction is the first application of the company's new strategy to monetize backup computing power based on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.

According to the terms of the agreement, QumulusAI will receive payment for the provision of computing resources at current market prices. Additionally, the company has the right to receive a share of the hedge fund's quarterly trading profit, while the agreement does not provide for QumulusAI's participation in covering possible trading losses of the partner. The client manages a hedge fund that uses AI agents to search, test and apply trading strategies using real capital around the clock. The fund uses the QumulusAI computing environment to support trading operations. Representatives of the company noted that this agreement differs from previously announced fixed-cost contracts based on the "take or pay" model. QumulusAI's revenue under the new deal will vary depending on the amount of computing resources consumed by the fund, as well as on the actual trading results within the established profit distribution threshold. Michael Maniscalco, CEO of QumulusAI, said that financial markets operate at high speed, which requires participants to have the appropriate infrastructure. According to him, the hedge fund needs a computing environment adapted to work in such conditions.

The management of QumulusAI pointed out that, despite the lack of guarantees for improving overall profitability, this strategy can increase the economic return on the use of spare capacity over time. QumulusAI is a distributed cloud platform for artificial intelligence that provides access to GPU computing through an information-driven and demand-driven deployment model in a network of data centers.