Carmen Li's Plan to Build a Futures Market for Compute

June 15, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Plan to Build a Futures Market for Compute

Carmen Li is building something that didn't exist two years ago: a financial market for GPU compute. As CEO of Silicon Data (the index provider) and Compute Exchange (the spot marketplace), she's working with the CME to launch GPU futures and options, pending CFTC approval. The core idea is straightforward — if compute is the new oil, it should have the same market infrastructure that oil has: transparent pricing, hedging instruments, and a way for both producers and consumers to manage risk. But the path from that analogy to a functioning market is full of complications that Li has been wrestling with for two and a half years.

The Market Structure Problem

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Guest Setup** - Tracy and Joe introduce the topic of creating a futures market for compute, framing it as a new commodity akin to oil, and introduce guest Carmen Li, CEO of Compute Exchange and Silicon Data.
2 (04:14) **Project Update & Core Mission** - Carmen Li explains the current state of the compute exchange project, six months after the initial discussion with Don Wilson.
3 (05:49) **Who Buys Compute on a Spot Market?** - Carmen describes the diverse buyer base for spot compute, moving beyond the typical multi-year contract model.
4 (07:47) **Who Will Use Futures & Options?** - Carmen draws the oil market analogy to explain the natural hedgers for compute futures.
5 (09:04) **The GPU Lottery: Quality & Performance Variance** - Carmen explains the challenge of non-fungibility and how Compute Exchange guarantees quality.
6 (10:48) **The Index Methodology: Solving the Fungibility Problem** - Carmen details how Silicon Data constructs a reliable GPU price index, analogous to Brent or WTI.
7 (13:15) **GPU Price Volatility: Is It Enough?** - Carmen confirms that GPU prices exhibit healthy commodity-level volatility, justifying the need for hedging instruments.

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Show Notes

When we spoke to DRW's Don Wilson last year, he talked about building out a GPU market that might be bigger than oil. Now, a year later, he is working with Carmen Li to do just that. Li is the CEO of two companies — Silicon Data and Compute Exchange (where she works alongside Wilson). The former company is building the index for GPU pricing while the latter is a spot marketplace for GPU procurement. Today's episode — recorded at our live show at City Winery in New York — gets into how Li is building a whole new market for GPUs at her two companies. We talk about the challenge of standardizing compute, GPU price volatility, if used GPUs are like used cars, what goes into constructing a GPU index, and what it means to win the GPU lottery.

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