About | Spruce Street Advisors

How we work

We help to price & evaluate the trade-offs in your capacity plan

We synthesize market intelligence, support you to price and sequence your need, and flag the likely trade-offs you need to consider.

Data transparency & enterprise-grade approach

We cut through the information asymmetry — bringing diligence to your compute procurement, and data integrity to the financial analysis that auditors, lenders, and boards place reliance on.

Automations & defining robust workflows

Where required we can step in to drive COGS modeling, evaluate compute cost impacts and unit economics, and support board communication — with a high level of automation.

Independent by structure

Spruce Street is compensated only by the clients of our advisory practice — companies buying compute, optimizing their cost structure, and preparing for capital events.

We operate without sell-side conflicts. In adjacent markets — marketplaces, resellers, brokerage — compensation typically flows from the sell side. Our approach, accepting no marketplace or reseller compensation, ensures that our structuring advice and our perspective on compute and financing structure are objective.

Founder

Jonathan McCullagh

Founder & Managing Partner

Jonathan McCullagh is the Founder and Managing Partner of Spruce Street, a platform built specifically to serve AI-native, agentic platforms, and fintech companies executing on complex strategic finance, capital allocation and compute procurement needs.

Background

Jonathan is an experienced finance and capital markets leader, and former enterprise SaaS founder/operator. He has led product, driven hiring across technology company functions, and brings deep understanding of the data and AI stack, AI infrastructure costs and financing structures, agentic systems, and vertical AI use cases across financial services, legal, and regulatory compliance.

Prior to Spruce Street, Jonathan founded API-first risktech company Arcturus.io, serving critical use cases for banks and capital markets platforms. He was a Managing Director and team head in HSBC's investment bank, and brings 17+ years of experience spanning private and public capital markets. His expertise includes leading multi-disciplinary teams, building the foundations of finance organizations, optimizing capital structures, positioning management teams for strategic events, and ensuring financial readiness for IPOs and PE-backed exits.

Capital markets & transactions

He has led the structuring of complex financings and served as financial advisor on transformational M&A transactions for global corporates and growth-stage companies across technology, industrials, telecoms, financial services, and consumer sectors. He has also structured specialty finance solutions for fintech companies, ecommerce marketplaces, and other rapidly growing businesses with financeable assets.

Global experience

He brings a global perspective and institutional networks from working in the Bay Area, New York, London, and Hong Kong.

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Why we built Spruce Street: compute and token costs have become a substantial COGS item for companies operating in the AI economy. How compute and inference is structured, financed and deployed is not just an engineering or financial statements matter. How company business models evolve and capital structures are developed to support compute and inference will be critical to a company's ability to scale, drive profitability and become durable category leaders. Spruce Street exists to support management teams and tech leaders in executing on their strategic objectives in the AI-native era.

Strategic insight, finance bench strength, and structuring expertise aligned to your objectives