How to Read the BOM: For Equipment Finance and Private Credit Lenders

Aug 21, 20261 min read

The bill of materials, or BOM, is the itemized equipment and services list used to price and deliver a GPU cluster.

Every line on it is a different asset, with different manufacturers, resale markets, and aging cycles. We put the whole thing on two pages, for equipment finance and private credit lenders.

The cost mix. GPUs run 76% to 82% of hardware value at 22 nodes and above.
How a cluster is designed, from inside one node up to the full BOM.
Every major component: what it does, why it matters, and who makes it.
The three quote formats, and a $20.6M illustrative BOM priced line by line.
Where quotes hide equipment value. One OEM listed a server at $1.5M online. The real price was closer to $450,000.

How to Read the BOM

August 2026 · 2 pages · Lender guide

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Written by

Bernie Margulies, CEO

Bernie leads program business at American Compute. He maintains relationships with reinsurers and a range of capacity managers, and enjoys the nuances of designing unique coverages for specialty risk. He holds the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation and is a candidate for the Associate in Captive Insurance (ACI). His background spans technology investment, insurtech leadership, and underwriting for emerging asset classes. Previously held senior roles at multi-billion dollar venture-backed insurance and technology companies.

AC Research

The AC Research team publishes analysis on GPU economics, AI infrastructure financing, and hardware depreciation. Our work is informed by direct experience underwriting GPU residual value insurance solutions.