Intelligence
Rate curve
The term structure of AI inference — the rate you can lock today across expiries, one curve per model, anchored to the live spot you'd otherwise pay.
Every locked-rate purchase on Relai fixes a price for a model out to an expiry. Plot those rates against time to expiry and they form a term structure: the same kind of curve that prices every mature commodity and rates market, now for machine compute.
What the curve is
- X-axis — time to expiry: the 1M, 3M and 6M lock tenors.
- Y-axis — the locked rate in
$/M tokensoffered at that expiry. - One curve per model — DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen, Mistral, GPT, Gemini, Claude.
- Spot reference — the live blended OpenRouter price, drawn as a dashed line, is what you'd pay un-hedged today.
How it is built
The curve is real, not a guess:
- The line is the offered locked rate at each tenor — the price you can actually fix right now.
- The front is anchored to the live spot rate the gateway pays today, so the near end always reflects reality.
- Each real lock contributes an observed
(expiry, rate)point; hollow markers show the median rate people have actually locked at a tenor. - As more contracts open across tenors, the curve gets denser and more accurate — it improves automatically with volume.
Reading the shape
| Shape | Meaning | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Contango (up) | Longer expiries priced higher than today | Market expects scarcity, demand growth, or a model launch |
| Backwardation (down) | Longer expiries priced lower than today | Market expects new supply or efficiency to push prices down |
| Local spike | A bump around one expiry | An anticipated event in that window |
Default: Relai's curve is in mild contango — a longer lock carries a premium over the 1M rate. Operators set the premium per tenor; the shape moves as real locks and live spot move.
Who uses it
- Builders — decide when to lock. Contango now? Lock sooner. Backwardation? You can wait.
- Analysts — read where the compute market is heading across models, the way a desk reads a yield curve.
Status
Live. The curve is served from real offered rates and the live spot today, and accrues real observed locks as the market is used. View it at trade.tryrelai.xyz/curve.