Futures brokers are getting clients ready for contracts on the cost of renting AI computing power, though no US exchange has been cleared to list them. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) closed its public consultation on the products yesterday (Tuesday).
BGC Group, ADM Investor Services and Nanhua USA are among the firms preparing, Bloomberg News reported. All three execute orders for hedge funds, commodity traders and corporate clients, and would stand between the exchanges and any cloud provider or AI developer looking to hedge.
London's trading industry is coming home!
For BGC, the products would add a listed hedge to a market it already brokers over the counter. Its energy, commodities and shipping unit, home to the new compute business, brought in $257.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025.
That was up 92% from a year earlier, mostly because of an acquisition.
CME Misses Its October Start Date
CME Group had planned to list two contracts on October 5, tied to Silicon Data's rental indexes for Nvidia's H100 and B200 chips and traded under New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) rules. The exchange set that date in August, while the CFTC was still preparing its consultation.
On September 21, the CFTC 's Division of Market Oversight extended its review of the NYMEX filings by 45 days, to the end of November 9. The letter cited the need to analyze "novel or complex issues" and pointed to the pending consultation.
- Best Brokers to Trade Gold in 2026: XAU/USD Brokers Compared
- Best Crypto CFD Brokers in 2026: Compare the Top Brokers
- GMG Builds Prime Brokerage Arm, Reports 78% Smaller Annual Loss
The request for comment, published in August, asks about the size and liquidity of the rental market, manipulation risk, customer protection and perpetual compute futures. It followed a 67-question consultation on perpetual futures for energy commodities in June.
"America cannot win the AI race without a robust derivatives market for compute," CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said when the consultation opened on August 19.
Brokers Build Desks Before the Contracts Exist
BGC set up BGC Compute Infrastructure Markets in June, starting with over-the-counter trading in compute and memory capacity. Zach Espinosa, who co-heads the unit with Marc Kuber, told Bloomberg he expects significant interest from firms that want to hedge.
"Our view is any form of standardization is positive for liquidity," Espinosa said.
BGC has also been reshaping its US derivatives business. In July it agreed to sell a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse to Fanatics while staying on as a liquidity partner.
ADM Investor Services, the futures brokerage and clearing arm of Archer-Daniels-Midland, is weighing new research hires to support clients, it said in a statement to Bloomberg.
At Nanhua USA, the US arm of China's Nanhua Futures, senior business development manager Greg Adamsick said the market has already brought in a new group of technology-focused customers.
Exchanges Compete for the Benchmark
CME is not alone in the queue. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) said in May it would list GPU futures based on Ornn's Compute Price Index.
Nodal Exchange said in September its planned contracts would settle against Compute Desk's GPU price indexes. Architect Financial Technologies is also waiting for approval of a US venue.
Demand for the underlying capacity shows up in data-center results. Equinix said about 60% of its largest first-quarter deals involved AI workloads, a measure of infrastructure contracts, not GPU rentals.
Peter Keavey, CME's global head of energy and environmental products, told Bloomberg it is hard to estimate how large the compute market could become.
Prediction market Kalshi took a different route, publishing forward curves for Nvidia GPU rental prices in July as reference data. On August 21, CFTC staff stayed a Kalshi amendment to its commodity-price contract until November 19, again citing the compute consultation.
