ICE, Ornn plan to launch GPU compute futures contracts
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE) and Ornn, a compute company building financial markets for AI, today announced plans to launch a suite of GPU compute futures contracts based on Ornn’s Compute Price Index (OCPI), which tracks live-traded spot prices for GPU compute across major hardware types.
“As AI has rapidly moved from research labs and academic campuses to becoming one of the most important drivers for the global economy, the market for compute has evolved just as quickly and is in desperate need of a globally accepted pricing mechanism and risk management tool,” said Trabue Bland, SVP of Futures Markets at ICE. “Ornn’s index, which is bringing greater transparency into the volatile cost of GPUs, is a natural fit for futures markets and we’re excited to offer a new tool for price discovery and risk management.”
The new futures contracts will be U.S. dollar denominated and cash-settled.
“As one of the largest GPU marketplaces serving AI developers and enterprises globally, we’ve seen firsthand how volatile and fragmented the compute market has become,” said Jasper Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Hyperbolic Labs. “The GPU market today increasingly resembles a global commodity market more than a traditional cloud market, yet the financial infrastructure around it is still in its early stages. Reliable benchmark pricing and hedging tools are becoming essential for both neocloud providers and AI labs managing large-scale compute exposure. We see Ornn’s index as an important foundation for bringing greater transparency, liquidity, and efficiency to the compute economy.”
OCPI will be built only from printed transactions, and will serve as the reference rate for cleared GPU compute derivatives. Contracts may reference the OCPI series covering H100, H200, B200, RTX 5090, and additional GPU types as the market develops.
“Compute has grown into a trillion-dollar market, yet it still lacks the pricing and risk-transfer infrastructure that every other major commodity relies on,” said Kush Bavaria, Co-Founder and CEO of Ornn. “Ornn puts a foundational piece of that infrastructure into place. Listing futures on ICE puts the risk-transfer layer in front of the institutional buyers and operators who need it most.”
The contracts will be launched subject to regulatory approval.
