AI NewsMeet the startup helping Wall Street put a price on AI compute

Meet the startup helping Wall Street put a price on AI compute

7:01 AM IST · August 20, 2026

Loading the player… The AI buildout shows no signs of slowing. And with hundreds of billions of dollars a year going into data centers and GPUs, compute has become the single biggest cost for anyone building AI products. But for all that spending, there still isn’t a straightforward way to put a price on compute — or for firms to hedge their exposure when the price changes. Silicon Data just closed a $30 million Series A to change that. The startup aims to become the reference price for GPU rental and an index that a Wall Street futures contract would settle against. The company plans to launch its compute futures tradingon the CME October 5th, pending regulatory approval.On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined bySteve Hou, head of research at Silicon Data, to discuss the health of the AI buildout, and why the data is telling a different story than the doom and gloom headlines about depreciating chips andstalleddata centers. Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.