Cme Group to launch compute futures as new AI commodity

Investing.com - CME Group plans to introduce futures contracts for AI compute capacity, aiming to turn processing power into a standardized, tradeable commodity similar to oil and other traditional commodities traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The exchange announced the product in August, with Pete Keavey, the CME executive responsible, stating that the contracts will standardize compute trading as oil evolved from spot trading into a global derivatives market.

Boston Consulting Group estimates the market for AI compute will climb from $360 billion in 2025 to roughly $2.3 trillion in 2030. BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) chief executive Larry Fink said in May that a new asset class will be buying futures of compute.

Working with index provider Silicon Data, CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) has chosen Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) H100 and B200 chips as the reference for its contracts. Silicon Data prices capacity on a B200 at $5.86 per hour and $2.77 on the older H100. CME plans to list contracts that reflect the future value of these rental rates, going out 36 months.

Hourly rental rates for Nvidia's H100 chips spiked as high as $8 at the beginning of 2024 before falling below $2 in late 2025. Oracle's Project Jupiter data centre build, due to come online in 2028, has faced setbacks including delays to a planned natural-gas pipeline and legal challenges over water and air-quality permits.

Research on the origins of futures markets finds that between two-thirds and three-quarters of new contracts fail to attract and sustain a profitable level of trading volume. Nvidia dominates chip supply, hyperscalers control much of the available capacity and a handful of AI laboratories account for much of the demand.

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