CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) announced plans to launch a compute futures market later this year in partnership with Silicon Data, pending regulatory review. The derivatives marketplace said the new futures contracts will allow traders, financial institutions, AI builders and cloud-service providers to manage price risk in the compute market.

The products will be based on Silicon Data's indices, described as daily GPU benchmarks for on-demand rental rates. Silicon Data is backed by global trading firm DRW.

"As the backbone of the digital economy, compute is the new oil of the 21st century," said CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy. "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."

Carmen Li, Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Data, said compute markets remain fragmented with pricing that varies across providers, regions and contract structures. "At Silicon Data, we built our benchmarks to bring consistency, transparency and real-time visibility to GPU markets that have historically lacked standardized reference pricing," Li said.

DRW Founder and CEO Don Wilson said the exponential growth in data center spending has been hampered by the lack of a hedging vehicle. "The launch of a compute futures market is an important solution to that problem that can help market participants manage price volatility and plan with greater certainty," Wilson said.

The announcement was made through a press release statement on May 12, 2026.