The new instruments will be launched as new ways to hedge A.I. infrastructure risks.
Derivatives exchanges company CME Group and GPU market intelligence and benchmarking provider Silicon Data will launch two compute futures contracts on Oct. 5, 2026, pending regulatory review, officials say.
“Explosive demand has driven sharp swings in compute prices, with volatility exposing a gap in the risk-management toolkit for companies building the A.I. infrastructure. CME Group and Silicon Data’s compute futures close that gap, bringing transparency to the market and allowing companies, including A.I. developers and hyperscalers, to lock in their costs. They will also provide a window into future AI spending,” according to the announcement.
The new trading instruments are intended to “bring much-needed hedging and investment vehicles to businesses looking to manage the cost of compute, the processing power and hardware infrastructure that machines need to train and run AI models,” according to the announcement.
“Both Silicon Data H100 Rental Index Futures and Silicon Data B200 Rental Index Futures will track indexes measuring hourly rental GPU costs published by Silicon Data. Each contract will represent a month’s worth of rent for the Nvidia H100, the chip central to today’s AI ecosystem, and the next-generation Nvidia Blackwell B200, respectively,” officials say.
“For years, two companies buying the exact same GPU capacity could pay wildly different prices with no way to know who got the better deal. They will now have a benchmark to check that against,” says Carmen Li, CEO of Silicon Data, in a prepared statement. “Compute futures give the market something it’s never had: a public, tradable reference price for the resource every AI system runs on.
The new contracts will be listed and subject to the rules of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), which is owned and operated by the CME Group.
CME Group venues facilitate trading in futures, options, cash, and over-the-counter (OTC) markets. The company also offers global benchmark products across major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, energy, agricultural products and metals, officials say. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec, and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform.
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