MW Is AI power really the new oil? Soon it will trade like just like a commodity.
By Joseph Adinolfi and Hannah Pedone
CME Group plans to launch futures that would let investors bet on the price of computing power
CME Group is planning to launch futures for computing power.
Practically since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, people have been saying that "compute" - shorthand for the immense computing power required by AI models - could become the oil of the 21st century.
Whether or not that comes to pass remains to be seen. But pretty soon, traders could have the opportunity to trade computing just like they trade oil - via a standardized futures contract.
On Tuesday, CME Group announced plans to launch what it described as a "first-in-class" market for compute futures. Silicon Data, which offers benchmarks that track the cost of GPU computing, is partnering with CME on the launch. Silicon Data is backed by Chicago-based trading giant DRW.
Graphics processing units like those made by chip powerhouse Nvidia (NVDA), are seen as essential for training AI models. Futures contracts allow investors to bet on what the price of a given asset, commodity or index might be on a certain date. Investors can use these products to hedge their risk, or speculate on how prices might move. Trading them requires a special type of brokerage account known as a margin account.
Pending regulatory approval, the product should be going live later this year, CME Group said in a statement. Discussion about the need for a tradeable market for computing power has been percolating on Wall Street for months. During an appearance at the Milken Conference in California last week, BlackRock's Larry Fink said he believed demand for computing was increasing so quickly, it was only a matter of time before a futures market would be launched.
"As the backbone of the digital economy, compute is the new oil of the 21st century," CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said in a statement.
Others, including DRW founder Don Wilson, have in the past spoken about the possibility that a market for computing could one day eclipse the size of the market for oil futures.
"I have long believed compute would evolve into a true commodity market, which is why DRW backed the creation of companies like Silicon Data and Compute Exchange early in the market's development," Wilson told MarketWatch.
He added: "Two years ago, most companies thought about compute primarily as a procurement issue. Today, it's increasingly being managed like a strategic commodity exposure with real implications for pricing, capital planning and growth."
Computing demand has continued to boom in 2026. The fact that companies like Oracle $(ORCL)$ and Meta $(META)$ seemingly can't build data centers fast enough has helped to bolster investors' confidence in AI as an investment theme. More than three years into a roaring bull market, AI companies' seemingly unquenchable thirst for computing has helped convince many market participants that the broader AI trade could still have room to run.
Warren Pies, co-founder of 3Fourteen Research, pointed out that the availability of computing power cratered earlier this year as major AI players scrambled to release their latest models. Pies and his firm created a GPU Availability Index, which aims to track how easily accessible computing demand is for end users - like Anthropic and OpenAI, which need it to train their models.
The index aims to measure the availability of Nvidia GPUs - still the gold standard for training AI models - through a number of major cloud providers. Pies declined to discuss what cloud providers his firm specifically tracks.
"In recent weeks, there is a very slight uptick in availability... but the compute scramble is still ongoing," Pies told MarketWatch via email.
The availability of computing power has plummeted this year.
Surging demand has made it difficult for entities that need more computing to secure access in a cost-effective way, which is one problem these futures contracts could ideally help to solve, said Carmen Li, founder of Silicon Data and a former trader at DRW.
"The pain is real, volatility is real, supply-demand shifting is real... last year the price dropped and this year [the] price came up and no one knows what's going on for the future," Li said during an interview with MarketWatch.
A representative for the CFTC, which will need to approve this new product before it can officially be brought to market, didn't respond to a request for comment.
Assuming computing futures do make it to market, the idea that they could find their way into the portfolios of speculators and otherwise ordinary investors isn't all that far-fetched. Pies and others have suggested that investors consider adding commodities like oil their portfolios, as bonds' ability to offset losses in the equity market has been dented by a global wave of inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the key details regarding how these computing contracts will work remained unclear as of Tuesday afternoon. The CME Group didn't say in its announcement how these contracts would be settled. Typically, contracts pegged to indexes are settled in cash. But when contacted by MarketWatch, a representative for CME said contract specifications were not yet available.
Some questioned the CME's decision to peg the new contract specifically to GPUs. Constant improvements in semiconductor technology could see other new classes of chips rise up and take their place, OneChronos CEO Kelly Littlepage said in comments shared with MarketWatch.
"The compute market needs financial instruments that can evolve with fast-changing technology. The challenge is that AI hardware is improving at a rapid but uncertain rate. Oil futures work because a barrel in 1985 has the same energy content as a barrel today," Littlepage said.
-Joseph Adinolfi -Hannah Pedone
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 12, 2026 18:02 ET (22:02 GMT)
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