CME Group and Silicon Data have announced plans to launch a pioneering compute futures market later this year, pending regulatory approval. This new financial product aims to provide traders, financial institutions, AI builders, and cloud-service providers with the necessary tools to manage price volatility in the burgeoning multi-trillion-dollar compute market, often referred to as the “oil of the 21st century.” The venture combines CME Group’s expertise in derivatives with Silicon Data’s innovative GPU benchmarking indices, addressing the current market fragmentation where pricing for compute services varies significantly across providers and regions.

CME Group: CME Group is the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, enabling clients to trade futures, options, cash, and OTC products across major asset classes like interest rates, equity indexes, FX, cryptocurrencies, energy, agriculture, and metals via platforms such as CME Globex, BrokerTec, and EBS. It operates key exchanges including Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, NYMEX, and COMEX, while providing central counterparty clearing through CME Clearing. In this announcement, CME Group is partnering with Silicon Data to launch compute futures later this year, pending regulatory review, to offer hedging for AI builders and cloud providers against compute price volatility.
Carmen Li: Carmen Li is Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Data, leading efforts to standardize GPU market data and benchmarking for the AI industry. Under her leadership, the platform addresses opacity in compute pricing across providers and regions. She stated that the CME Group partnership elevates compute to a mature financial market for hedging and planning amid rising demand.
Don Wilson: Don Wilson is Founder and CEO of DRW, a diversified Chicago-based trading firm operating in fixed income, ETFs, equities, FX, commodities, cryptoassets, and energy. DRW champions financial innovation, having founded companies like Digital Asset, ErisX, and Silicon Data. In the announcement, Wilson predicted compute will become the world’s largest commodity and praised the futures launch as a vital hedging solution.
Terry Duffy: Terry Duffy is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CME Group, overseeing the development of derivatives markets and risk management solutions worldwide. He has guided the expansion of benchmark products across diverse asset classes. In the press release, Duffy described compute as the ‘oil of the 21st century’ and highlighted CME Group’s role in delivering liquidity and transparency through the new futures partnership.
Silicon Data: Silicon Data is a market intelligence platform for AI compute, specializing in real-time pricing indices, performance benchmarks, forward curves, and data spanning GPUs, LLM tokens, and related infrastructure. Backed by global trading firm DRW, it provides the first daily GPU benchmarks for on-demand rental rates to equip operators, investors, and enterprises with transparency in AI economics. In the news, Silicon Data is supplying the indices for new compute futures contracts with CME Group to standardize and manage risks in fragmented compute markets.

Hedging Demand: AI builders, cloud providers, and investors require tools to manage volatility in the multi-trillion-dollar compute market.
Compute Backbone: Compute underpins the digital economy by powering AI model training, transaction clearing, and data processing.
Market Fragmentation: Compute pricing varies dramatically across providers, regions, and contract structures, lacking standardized reference points.