A futures market based on computing capacity rental rates is set to launch as artificial intelligence (AI) fever has turned chip output into a major asset.
CME Group, the world's largest derivatives exchange, and Silicon Data, a graphics processing unit (GPU) market intelligence firm, announced on Wednesday local time that they will launch the world's first "compute futures market" in the second half of this year, pending regulatory approval.
Based on a price index provided by Silicon Data, the compute futures will offer the world's first daily GPU benchmark. Futures contracts serve as benchmarks that allow market participants to trade at an agreed price at a specific future point in time. In the GPU market, where supply-demand imbalances result in long lead times and high price volatility, compute futures are expected to provide companies with a reference point for stable budgeting.
Silicon Data currently provides daily rental rate information for Nvidia's A100, H100, and B200 chips on financial data platforms including LSEG and Bloomberg. CME Group said the market "will help traders, financial institutions, AI developers, and cloud service providers manage the volatility and risks of the computing market, which has grown to a trillion-dollar scale."
"Compute is a core foundation of the digital economy and the new oil of the 21st century," said Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO of CME Group. "Every AI model training, transaction settlement, and data processing runs on compute. Compute itself is rapidly becoming a new asset class."
He added, "Investors need a reliable futures market that can provide transparency, liquidity, and efficient risk management." Don Wilson, founder and CEO of global trading firm DRW, also said in the statement that "compute will ultimately become the world's largest commodity."
