<strong>Carmen Li's Plan to Build a Futures Market for Compute</strong>

Carmen Li, a former quantitative trader at Citadel, is developing a futures market for computing power, aiming to create a financial instrument for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). This initiative, backed by $10 million in seed funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, seeks to address the volatile and unpredictable nature of GPU availability and pricing. Li's company, known as "Compute Index," plans to offer derivatives that allow companies to hedge against future price fluctuations and secure computing resources. The goal is to provide a more stable and transparent way for businesses, particularly those in AI development, to manage their substantial compute needs. The current market for GPUs is characterized by supply chain constraints and surging demand, making long-term planning difficult for AI firms. Compute Index intends to mirror traditional financial markets by offering futures contracts that will be settled based on a benchmark index of GPU prices. This benchmark will aggregate data from various sources, including cloud providers and hardware manufacturers, to establish a representative market price. The company anticipates launching its first products within 18 months, with a focus on the most in-demand GPUs used for AI training and inference. Li's background in quantitative finance is seen as a key asset in building a robust and liquid market for this nascent asset class. The venture aims to bring financial discipline and predictability to the hardware-intensive field of artificial intelligence.