The world's leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group Inc, in collaboration with Silicon Data, a GPU market intelligence and benchmark pricing leader backed by global trading firm DRW, has announced plans to introduce two compute futures contracts on October 5, 2026, pending regulatory approval. These innovative trading instruments are designed to offer businesses a crucial avenue for hedging and investment, enabling them to manage compute costs—the processing power and hardware infrastructure required for training and running AI models.
The Silicon Data H100 rental index futures and Silicon Data B200 rental index futures will track benchmark indices for hourly GPU rental prices published by Silicon Data. Each contract corresponds to the one-month rental cost of NVIDIA's H100, the current core chip in the AI ecosystem, and the one-month rental of NVIDIA's next-generation Blackwell B200, respectively.
"Compute has become the currency of the AI era, and this innovative market will bring transparency to the current and future costs that AI developers and hyperscale data centers must hedge as they expand," said Pete Keavey, Global Head of Energy and Environmental Products at CME Group. "Just as oil powered the 20th-century economy and evolved from spot trading into a global derivatives market, our futures contracts will transform compute into a standardized, tradable commodity, providing a reliable, regulated price risk management platform for businesses worldwide."
"In the past, two companies procuring equivalent GPU compute capacity could see significant price discrepancies, with no way to know which price was more reasonable. Now, they have a public benchmark to reference," said Carmen Li, CEO of Silicon Data. "Compute futures bring an unprecedented tool to the market—a publicly tradable reference price for the core resource of AI systems. Silicon Data's benchmark indices make this price credible, while CME Group makes it tradable. Together, they shift compute from a resource negotiated in the dark to a market around which businesses can truly plan."
The explosive growth in compute demand has triggered significant price volatility and exposed a gap in risk management tools for AI infrastructure builders. The compute futures from CME Group and Silicon Data aim to fill this void, not only enhancing market transparency but also enabling enterprises like AI developers and hyperscale data centers to lock in compute costs, while offering a forward-looking window into future AI investment. The new contracts will be listed on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and will be subject to the exchange's rules.