Stoa Raises Funding From 212 for an AI Hardware Exchange
US-based Stoa, a Y Combinator Summer 2026 company, has secured investment from 212 to build a spot marketplace and price index for GPUs and other physical AI hardware.
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giftdetect· the right gift in minutesVenture capital firm 212 has invested in Stoa, a US-based startup building what it calls the first centralized spot marketplace for physical AI hardware, together with the first hardware price index for these assets. The company plans to use the funding to improve its product, grow its team, expand its network and reach international markets.
Stoa was founded by Berat Çelik (CEO), Eren Berke Sağlam (CFO) and Kaan Yiğit (CTO), and took part in Y Combinator's summer 2026 program. It starts with graphics processing units (GPUs) used in AI infrastructure.
Two products: Markets and Intelligence
Stoa Markets connects buyers with verified suppliers and coordinates the whole trading process, from collecting competitive offers to closing the transaction. Through partners, it also brings inspection, shipping, insurance and financing into the flow, supporting trades across the hardware's lifetime.
Stoa Intelligence supplies price indexes and valuation data so companies can value hardware assets and track market values. According to Sağlam, the system prices hardware by model, configuration, condition and age. He said institutions financing these assets have so far relied on list prices, and now have an independent reference built on real transactions. Yiğit said verification, offer collection, payment and transaction records are combined in one system, and the index data comes from that infrastructure.
Why it matters
Çelik said the price of physical GPUs can move differently from compute rental prices, creating separate risks for hardware owners and the institutions that finance them. The company aims to build reliable reference prices to support financing and price-risk decisions.
212 Regional Fund Partner Kıvanç Aydın said GPUs take up a growing share of company balance sheets as AI infrastructure spending rises, yet buying and selling them remains fragmented and pricing is not transparent enough. He said Stoa starts with a marketplace, builds reference prices from its transactions and aims over time to create an exchange where the hardware can be financed and price risk managed.
For 2027, Stoa plans to develop infrastructure for financial products tied to the value of GPU hardware, extending its marketplace and pricing tools with instruments for managing hardware price risk.
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