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CME Group to launch first futures contracts on AI computing power. CME Group and Silicon Data announced on Monday that they will launch the first regulated futures contracts tied to the rental price of artificial intelligence computing power, with trading set to begin on October 5 pending regulatory approval. The two contracts, the Silicon Data H100 Rental Index Future and the Silicon Data B200 Rental Index Future, will track hourly rental rates for Nvidia's H100 and next-generation Blackwell B200 graphics processing units, allowing companies and investors to hedge or speculate on the cost of the infrastructure that underpins modern AI systems. News summary. * CME Group and Silicon Data will launch two compute futures contracts on October 5, 2026, pending regulatory review. * The contracts will track Silicon Data's hourly GPU rental indexes for Nvidia's H100 and Blackwell B200 chips. * Each contract represents one month's rent for an Nvidia H100, settled financially against the benchmark index. * The products will be listed on NYMEX and cleared through CME Clearing. * Silicon Data, backed by trading firm DRW, publishes what it describes as the first daily GPU benchmarks for on-demand rental rates. How the contracts work. The futures will be cash-settled against Silicon Data's indexes, which aggregate hourly rental prices for GPU capacity across cloud providers and data center operators. Rather than delivering physical chips, the contracts will settle financially based on the average index price over the contract month. Each contract will represent one month of rent for a single Nvidia H100 GPU, priced in U.S. dollars. The B200 contract will use a similar structure tied to the newer Blackwell architecture. The products are designed for AI developers, cloud-service providers, and institutional investors who need to manage exposure to compute price volatility without taking physical delivery of hardware. A fragmented market. Silicon Data Chief Executive Officer Carmen Li said the launch addresses a pricing opacity problem that has plagued the compute market. "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," Li said in a statement provided to CNBC. "They will now have a benchmark to check that against." Li, a former Bloomberg and DRW employee, founded Silicon Data in April 2024 to bring financial-market infrastructure to GPU pricing. The company has since published daily rental indexes for the A100, H100, and B200, along with forward curves and hyperscaler benchmarks. DRW, the Chicago-based trading firm founded by Don Wilson, provided seed backing. You Might Be Interested In Pete Keavey, global head of energy and environmental products at CME Group, compared compute to oil in a statement. "Just as oil fueled the 20th century economy and evolved from spot trading into a global derivatives market, our futures contracts will now turn compute into a standardized, tradable commodity that will provide global businesses with a reliable, regulated venue to manage price risk," he said. The broader infrastructure push. The launch arrives as Wall Street builds new financial instruments around the AI infrastructure boom. Nvidia is working with several of the world's largest asset managers on an effort that could channel as much as $500 billion into AI data centers and related infrastructure, according to prior reporting. Compute futures add a derivatives layer to that ecosystem. Instead of investing directly in data centers, chipmakers, or cloud providers, investors can now gain exposure to the underlying price of computing capacity itself. For AI labs and hyperscalers, the contracts offer a hedging mechanism against the sharp price swings that have characterized the GPU rental market. CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy said in a May announcement that "compute is the new oil of the 21st century" and that "every AI model trained, every transaction cleared, and every byte of data processed runs on compute, which is becoming a fast-emerging asset class in its own right." The contracts remain subject to regulatory review. CME Group has not specified which regulator is conducting the review, though NYMEX operates under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. You Might Be Interested In

BlueCrest likes hiring traders from banks. Sometimes they quickly leave again. 3 hours ago If you want to become partner in a hedge fund before the age of 30, you might want to join BlueCrest, the former hedge fund which has become the family office of macro trading legend Mike Platt. BlueCrest employs two partner level portfolio managers in London aged under 30 years old: Benjamin Turner, aged 25, who joined from Barclays in May, and Luke Ryan, aged 27, who joined from DRW in June. Other funds also hire young traders from banks. Balyasny, for example, hired 28 year-old Wajih Ahmed from Goldman Sachs last November. And 29 year-old Paulo Costa went from Goldman to Millennium in March. To our knowledge, though, Ahmed and Costa are not partners. As a rule, headhunters say it's often easiest to go from a bank to BlueCrest than to a multistrategy hedge fund. "BlueCrest stands out as the one single fund that is still very open to taking from the sell-side," says one hedge fund-focused headhunter, speaking off the record. "Other firms here have been quite vocal with us about their preference for avoiding sell-side guys. The barrier to entry to top funds is now higher than ever and there's usually a requirement for buy-side track records." The biggest multistrategy funds now want people who can manage $2bn with a Sharpe above 1.5. "A portfolio manager with a buy-side track record will always command higher interest than an untested sell-side trader," says the headhunter. "Big funds see sell-side guys as "bets", but fewer and fewer make the mark." At BlueCrest, by comparison, recent hires include Akash Garg, an emerging markets trader from JPMorgan, and Coco Hands, a former CEEMEA rates trader from BNP Paribas. It's thought that the fund is comparatively willing to hire traders from banks and to start them on smaller pools of capital. However, BlueCrest has also made a large number of recent PM recruits from the buy-side globally. Working for BlueCrest can be very lucrative. Platt is reputed to pay successful PMs there 30% of profits versus a standard 20% elsewhere. However, pay is thought to be deferred over three years. There are unconfirmed suggestions that any subsequent negative drawdowns at the fund are netted off against these deferrals. Joining BlueCrest is one thing. But as at many large hedge funds, staying there can be another. BlueCrest didn't respond to a request to comment for this article, but some people have come and swiftly gone. Earlier this year, Ankur Aneja, a top trader at Barclays, left after less than six months for reasons that are unclear, but which may have been related to the start of the war in the Middle East. Aneja didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. It's not clear whether he was involved in a drawdown or not. In February, Alex Watson, a senior natural gas trader who'd joined BlueCrest in October 2023 (from EDF, not a bank) was let go along with a team of analysts. Bloomberg reported that whipsawing gas prices had dented his profitability. Watson didn't respond to our query. Previous swift exits, include Artur Tarczynski, the ex-EMEA head of interest rate options trading at Deutsche Bank. Tarczynski briefly joined BlueCrest in November 2021 before leaving in June 2022. He is now co-head of non-linear rates trading at Bank of America. It's not clear why Tarczynski left BlueCrest so soon. Decisions to cut risk at BlueCrest are thought to be made predominantly by Platt. A recent court case based on historic working practices at BlueCrest heard that the fund was managed by a five person executive committee, but that "Essentially we have one client." - Michael Platt. Platt didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. When BlueCrest does part company with people, there are suggestions that it might shorten non-competes to help them on their way. Speaking off the record, one former trader who worked for the fund for a brief period after joining from a bank, told us he'd been able to negotiate an agreement offering him more lenient terms for his departure. Another headhunter said he's seen this happen a few times recently as people have left BlueCrest. Reduced non-competes could mitigate the risk of leaving a banking seat for BlueCrest. It's also worth noting that a lot of traders at BlueCrest do endure: there are 19 partners with over five years tenure at BlueCrest LLP in London, many of whom came from banks. For the moment, though, the swift coming and going of Aneja is fresh in people's minds. One London macro trader told us he had been considering going to BlueCrest, but is now feeling a little wary as a result. Another headhunter said BlueCrest is simply like most hedge funds. "There are no favourites on the buyside. You make money or you're gone. It's still a meritocracy, unlike banks," he reflected. Follow me on X. Follow me on LinkedIn. Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you'd like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email [email protected]. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.